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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/35326-8.txt b/35326-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e5fe852 --- /dev/null +++ b/35326-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,10567 @@ +Project Gutenberg's The Long Lane's Turning, by Hallie Erminie Rives + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Long Lane's Turning + +Author: Hallie Erminie Rives + +Illustrator: Frances Rogers + +Release Date: August 21, 2011 [EBook #35326] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LONG LANE'S TURNING *** + + + + +Produced by Al Haines + + + + + + + + + + +[Frontispiece: Her lips trembled, but she spoke in a clear undertone, +audible only to him, which faltered the merest trifle (Page 316.)] + + + + + + +THE LONG LANE'S TURNING + + +BY + +HALLIE ERMINIE RIVES + +(Mrs. Post Wheeler) + + +Author of "Satan Sanderson" "Hearts Courageous," "The Valiants of +Virginia," etc. + + + +WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY + +FRANCES ROGERS + + + + +NEW YORK + +DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY + +1917 + + + + +Copyright, 1916, 1917 + +By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, Inc. + +as "The Heart of a Man" + + +Copyright, 1917 + +By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, Inc. + + + + +CONTENTS + + +CHAPTER + + I THE COUNSEL FOR THE DEFENCE + II A MAN AND A WOMAN + III THE AWAKENING + IV THE PRODIGAL + V THE UNLAID GHOST + VI THE JUDGE SITS IN THE LAMPLIGHT + VII ARROWS OF DESIRE + VIII THE THRUST + IX THE TURN OF THE LONG LANE + X AFTER A YEAR + XI CRAIG FINDS HIS WEAPON + XII A HOSTAGE TO THE BOTTLE + XIII THE HEART OF A MAN + XIV THE HANDWRITING ON THE WALL + XV THE ONLY WAY + XVI DERELICT + XVII LIKE A THIEF IN THE NIGHT + XVIII THE PRICE + XIX PADDY THE BRICK INTERVENES + XX WHAT MATTERED MOST + XXI CRAIG'S WAY + XXII HARRY DECIDES + XXIII THE BROKEN PICTURE + XXIV THE WOMAN WHO KNEW + XXV ON TRIAL + XXVI THE HAUNTER OF THE SHADOW + XXVII THE END OF THE JOURNEY + XXVIII THE MAN IN THE WHEELED CHAIR + XXIX THE LONE BATTLE + XXX THE GIPSY RING + XXXI AMBUSH + XXXII THE COMING OF JOHN STARK + XXXIII THE UNDERSTUDY + XXXIV THE CRUCIBLE + XXXV SANCTUARY + XXXVI JUBILEE JIM'S JOURNEY + XXXVII THE CALL + XXXVIII THE CHALLENGE + XXXIX THE JAILBIRD + XL GENTLEMEN ALL + XLI DARK DAYS + XLII THE MENDED ROAD + XLIII THE PITFALL + XLIV THE LIGHTED FUSE + XLV THE CHASM + XLVI CRAIG STRIKES + XLVII WITH HIS BACK TO THE WALL + XLVIII THE HEART OF A WOMAN + XLIX THE GOVERNOR TAKES A HAND + L REVELATION + + + + +ILLUSTRATIONS + + +Her lips trembled, but she spoke in a clear + undertone, audible only to him, which faltered + the merest trifle. (Page 316) . . . _Frontispiece_ + +"I have answered you," she replied, "once and for all. + You will please consider it final" + +He turned his head and saw the figure in the doorway. + "Echo!" he cried and rose to his feet + +All at once the hound flung up his great head with a + low howl, then, crouching, licked the nerveless + hand that hung down + + + + +THE LONG LANE'S TURNING + + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE COUNSEL FOR THE DEFENCE + +The dark was falling over the court-room. A lurid ray of the setting +sun gleamed redly on the dust-streaked window panes, and struggled +disconsolately with the melancholy gleam of the oil lamps that an +awkward attendant with creaking foot-leather had laboriously lighted in +their wall-brackets. Their pale radiance gleamed on the painted faces +of dead jurists that looked down from fly-specked canvases on the walls +and was reflected from the mass of moving, living faces that filled the +room, whose eyes gazed alternately at the Judge's vacant seat, and at +the empty railed space that had penned in the restless jury now +considering their verdict in an upper room--to return again and again +to the spot where sat the man over whose dingy case a medley of voices +had declaimed and wrangled throughout that southern spring day. + +He sat slouched in his chair, his narrow, faded-blue eyes, strained and +frightened, fixed on the empty jury-box, his uncertain hand lifting +from time to time to give a swift, furtive touch to his collar or a +thrust to his wiry, sand-coloured hair. In the pallid lamp-light the +hard sneer that had curved his lips during the dragging trial had faded +and his face seemed all at once piteous and younger. + +To a stranger there would have seemed little in the circumstances to +inspire the popular interest the full room betokened. The accused was +a rough sawyer, known to his fellows of the logging camp as "Paddy the +Brick," with a history of sluggishness and inebriety behind him. The +crime of which he stood charged was the theft of a comrade's earnings, +the story merely one of those sordid dramas of menial life which were +so familiar. The evidence, though purely circumstantial, was, to a +casual eye, sufficiently conclusive. + +Yet in the minds of most of those who had filled the dingy court room +during the two days just passed, there had been until the last hour a +general expectation that the man would be cleared. This had been based +upon nothing save the common knowledge that his counsel was Harry +Sevier. + +The latter had never failed to justify the expectations that had +habitually heralded his doings. Young, likable, perfectly equipped and +knowing his southern world, he had returned, after a half dozen years +of foreign schooling, to step into a social niche readily accorded him +by those who had seen little of him since boyhood. His grey eyes and +crisp, dark beard, had been distinguishing marks of forebears whose +lives had been lived in that neighbourhood and who had left their vivid +impress upon the institutions of their time; statesmen, diplomats and +soldiers had been of that line, and he himself, with his characteristic +mannerisms, his unimpeachable grooming, his nice observance of the +social code, had come to be regarded as the perfect pattern of his +type. Left an orphan at an early age, he had inherited a comfortable +property and the income of a city block, and he spent the money +judiciously, if lavishly. His Panhard was the swiftest car in town, as +his offices were the most sumptuous, though ostentatiously simple in +appointment. He had a Japanese valet, and the "at homes" which he +occasionally gave in his bachelor apartment, though they might be +dominated "pink teas" by the envious unbidden, were affairs to which an +_entrée_ was a hallmark. He maintained also a shooting-box on an upper +slope of the Blue Ridge--a comfortable bungalow set in a hundred acres +of wilderness--whither of autumns he and a dozen other choice spirits +were wont to fare for a fortnight's tramping and fishing, sleeping on +pungent hemlock boughs and eating homely food cooked by the single +negro servant who lived there as caretaker. He had a gift for private +theatricals--he was in constant demand of the Amateur Dramatic +Club--and had more than a _dilettante_ appreciation of music and art. + +As regards his profession, he had injected into the somewhat +cut-and-dried legal life of the old Capital an unusual and winning +element of personality and a method at variance with established usage. +His very eccentricities had set him apart from the mass, who were so +glamoured with the sordid things of life; and the apparent contempt for +material reward with which he defended poor and unknown clients as +readily as rich and influential ones had its appeal to a class which +possessed imagination and ideals. There had seldom been a case in +which he had not successfully employed a curious subterranean logic--an +apparently wilful insistence upon what seemed at first glance the +unvital and immaterial--as a preliminary to a swift _volte-face_ by +which he turned the evidence at a new and unexpected angle of +inference, and drove home the doubt with a brilliant display of oratory +which captivated and--for the moment--convinced. In the four years in +which he had stamped his individuality upon the town, not only had he +never lost a criminal case, but he had created a certain conviction +that a trial in which he figured would offer unmistakable elements of +surprise and entertainment. So that the Criminal Court had come, in a +way, to be the fashion, and the sombre chambers of justice saw many an +assemblage that would have graced another sort of gathering. + +Seldom, however, on this day had Harry's glance through his gold-rimmed +eye-glasses wandered to the benches. With many there he had danced and +golfed and bridged a hundred times. That, however, had been play; +this, which had come to furnish another and quite as fascinating a sort +of entertainment for them, was what he had chosen to make the more +serious business--in so far as anything had been serious to him--of his +life. So that his apparent disregard of this tribute to his +personality for the sober business in hand, set over against the +palpable frivolity of purpose that actuated the moiety of his audience, +was, after all, only another indication to them of that fine sense of +the fitting for which his world admired him. + +Through the long morning the evidence had accumulated. One by one the +merciless rivets had been driven home by the prosecuting attorney. The +chain of evidence seemed flawless. And Harry Sevier's +cross-examination had seemed scarcely more than perfunctory--had +appeared somehow to miss that subtle and pregnant suggestion, that +longer reach that heretofore had uncovered a hitherto unnoted but +baffling doubt. Yet to those who knew him this but pointed to a more +effective climax, a more engrossing sensation when the psychological +moment should arrive and that appealing figure arise to insert the +nicely calculated spoke in the wheel that, under the manipulation of +the state's attorney, was rolling so swiftly in its ominous course; and +on the back-benches, where sat a group of members of the Country Club, +a whispered bet that the accused this time would not get off, found as +usual no taker. + +Evidence finished, the Court rose for a recess and Harry vanished +through a side-door. Ten minutes later he was in his office. He +vouchsafed no word to the clerk who sat in the outer room, but passed +quickly through to the inner sanctum and closed and locked the door. +The self-control bred of the strenuous occupation of the court room had +slipped now from his face, leaving it suddenly strained. There were +moist drops upon his forehead but his hands were arid and dry. He drew +the blind to shut out the dull, grey, winter light and switched on the +electric desk-lamp, and as he did so his eyes turned stealthily to the +wall--to a locked cabinet whose key was in his pocket. + +They turned again almost immediately to the baize-covered desk, where +stood a plain, flat silver frame. It held a photograph of a portrait +painted by Sargent which had been a _salon_ favourite of a few years +before. It was that of a young girl, seated and leaning intently +forward from an arm chair. One hand was at her throat, the other +dropped against the dusky shoulder of a dog stretched at her feet, and +in her dark eyes was the eternal question which maidenhood asks of +life. The lines of the face were cameo-like, and its southern beauty +held that particular blend of ingeniousness and hauteur that is the +result of the selection and inbreeding of generations. He stood still +a moment, looking fixedly at it, his tongue touching his lips, before +he crossed the room and turned the picture face-down upon the desk. He +almost ran to the cabinet, unlocked its mirrored door, and took from it +a bottle and a glass. He poured out a full goblet of the gurgling +liquid and drank it off. Then he drew a long breath. + +"Yes," he said, "I'll lie to myself no more! I've got to have it or +throw up the sponge. It was my own once, that wonderful gift--whatever +it is. Once it was my own brain, unhelped, that sent the glow to my +heart and the fire to my tongue--till words had glorious colours and +pictures painted themselves out of nothing. Once it was my own mind +that saw a problem as clear as crystal. But I wasn't content. I +wanted the short cut, and this showed me the way. And now--now--I've +dropped the reins. It's not Harry Sevier that wins cases--it's that +bottle!" + +He began to stride up and down the narrow room; deep lines had etched +themselves in the mobile face. "There was the Davencourt Case," he +said to himself. "Not a shred of decent evidence to go on, and the +whole court packed with prejudice, and he was as guilty as the devil. +Yet I won! That was only a year ago, but I couldn't do it now--without +what is in that decanter! All day yesterday I was heavy, my mind was +as blank as a glacier. In the cross-examination I couldn't see a foot +before me. But for this half-hour it would go hard with my client at +the finish. As it is I wouldn't want a better foil than old Maitland +for the prosecution. How he has slaved over his witnesses! I might +have made some of the testimony that sounded so damning look like a +cocked-hat if I had gone about it in his laborious way. For this +'Paddy the Brick' has plenty of friends, for all his crookedness. Half +the logging-camp, apparently, chipped in to make up my retaining-fee. +But pshaw! what's the use? I can get him off without it. In the last +analysis it's feeling, not facts, that will sway them--feeling first, +and then conscience. Every man of them must see _himself_, first +shivering in the shoes of my thief, and then wearing the Judge's gown. +When the psychological moment comes there is only to drive home the +fallibility of circumstantial evidence and sear those twelve +slow-going, matter-of-fact brains with a sense of the inherent +perversity of appearances!" He smiled bitterly. "Especially," he +added, "when there's whisky in the story. My client was drunk as a +boiled owl when he was arrested--the stolen plunder might easily have +been put on him, as he claims it was. The jury will understand that. +There's probably not a man on it who doesn't get squiffy now and then." + +He stopped in his walk and held up a hand against the light--it wavered +ever so little. The draught had not yet brought its accustomed poise +of nerve--its tense certitude, its mental glow and confidence. With an +impatient gesture he turned again to the cabinet. "One used to do it," +he said; "it will evidently take more to-day to restore our bold Turpin +to his career on the highway!" He set the empty glass in its place +with a short laugh. + +"Curious," he said. "If he _were_ innocent and drink _had_ got him +into this scrape, there would be a poetic justice in drink's getting +him out!" + +As he turned to lock the cabinet, the bell of his desk-telephone +rang--three short, sharp rings. It was the clerk's warning that the +court was about to reassemble. He drew a deep breath, and cast a quick +glance at the little mirrored door. No tinge was rising in his +colourless face, no warming tingle in his veins. His hands were +uncertain and his fingers had an odd numbness. A keen, cold edge of +anxiety touched him. Always heretofore, when he had sat with the black +decanter, he had felt the wonderful, slow change--the gradual glow +creeping through every nerve, the tightening of muscle and sinew as for +a race, the thrilling, glad sense of renewed power and unleashed +ability and the inevitable quivering rush of lambent images in his +brain. The signal was too long in coming to-day--and he could not +wait! His hand shook as it reached again to the little shelf. An +instant he hesitated--for a breath, while the light twinkled from the +deep-cut facets, he strove to remember whether he had drunk one glass +or two. Then with a frown he poured the draught and drinking it off, +locked the cabinet, and went hurriedly out. + +When he entered the courtroom, the wide space had filled again and the +State's Attorney had opened his address--a brief one, icily emotionless +and rigidly exact--the very background upon which so often Harry +Sevier's winged words had spelled victory for a cause prejudged as +lost. And he was to reply--with the final speech for whose inspiration +he had fled to that locked cabinet in the darkened inner-office. Paddy +the Brick listened with the look of some trapped thing gazing at its +captor, sometimes turning toward his counsel a furtive wavering glance +that was blent equally of dread and dog-like appeal. These glances +were unreturned. Harry Sevier sat motionless, his eyes straight before +him. + +But behind that mask Harry's thought was turning and turning upon +itself. The sudden sharp edge of anxiety that had caught him in his +office had grown to a thriving fear. His ally was failing him. The +master, whose upper hand he had just acknowledged--whose aid had been +so freely given him in really vital moments--was forsaking him at the +turn of a wretched, second-rate case of common thievery! He realised +it with a sickening sense of wonder that mingled with a dull anger at +the littleness of the issue, and through the confused mist of his mind +his inner ear seemed to hear a far-distant sardonic laughter--as though +the Djin of the bottle laughed in the locked wall-cabinet at his dismay. + +He rose to speak for the defence with an icy clog upon his faculties, +while beneath that frozen surface the something that had been shackled +reared and struggled vainly. Vocabulary, cunning of phrase, and +logical sequence of argument had not deserted him; he realised this +with a blind rage that seemed with a singular separateness to lie +outside of himself--to associate itself strangely with the prisoner. +But the persuasion that had so often checkmated justice, the calculated +force, the insinuating tactfulness, the living, warm appeal that had +had their way in the past were absent. He had a curious feeling of +duality, as though two Harry Seviers had suddenly and painfully drawn +apart--the one whose measured voice was speaking, and the other which +clamoured and appealed, conscious only of its own deadly smother and of +the despairing face of the man with the wiry sand-coloured hair who sat +slouched in his chair beside him. + +The roomful seemed very still. The Judge was looking at him fixedly, +through bowed horn-glasses set far down on his nose. Harry was aware +that in the countenance of the state's attorney puzzle and a stealthy +relief struggled together. With desperate narrowness he watched the +faces of the jury for a sign, a tentative withdrawal of stolidity that +betokened a quickened and awakening interest. But they sat moveless +and impassive. There was a last hideous pause, in which he thought the +foreman suppressed an incipient yawn, when his own brain refused +further struggle. He knew that he had been betrayed. The door of +human sympathy would not open--he had lost the magic key. + +The reply of the State's Attorney was a mere _résumé_ of the evidence. +He had needed no more. The Judge's charge was brief. Then had come +the stir of moving bodies and the buzz of whispers--the shuffling of +feet as the Judge retired and the jurors filed out--and at length the +painful hiatus with the red sunlight and the pallid lamps. + +This was broken presently by three measured raps on the door of the +jury-room, which, as the Judge re-entered, opened to admit the jurors. +They were quickly polled and the verdict given--guilty. The sentence +followed immediately. + +With the fateful words Harry Sevier turned his eyes, almost as if +suddenly awakening from sleep, upon the court-room, and met across the +moving benches a woman's concentrated and wondering look. She was Echo +Allen, the original of the portrait whose photograph lay face-down upon +his office desk. The neutral-tinted presentment, however, had been far +from realising the concrete flush of sensuous beauty of its living +original, with her straight lithe frame, her hair all a wash of warm +russets and sunny golds, framing a face perfect in contour and with a +complexion as soft as a moth's wing. And the beauty of this was now +deepened, if possible, by the shadow upon it of puzzled pain and +inquiry. An instant the gaze between them hung, then it broke as she +turned away, gathering her white furs about her throat with a slow, +hesitant gesture. With the sudden stab of shame and humiliation that +rushed through him--for he had not seen her there before that +moment--something seemed to break, too, in Harry's brain; it was the +rigid lock which had been somehow put upon his faculties. The emptying +room felt all at once a furnace, and little jerking shocks, like tiny +electric currents, were running over him, prickling to the tips of his +fingers. Intoxication was upon him, sudden and overwhelming, but he +did not recognise it. He had never been drunk, in the sense popularly +understood. He had always regarded with wondering distaste the +occasional abject surrender of mind and body to the effect of alcohol +with which he was familiar in men of his class, and the vulgar spree +filled him with disgust. He was nicely abstemious at his club and he +had never entered a saloon in his life. His indulgences, deeper and +more and more frequent as they had grown of late, had been hidden +behind the shades of his inner office, and the liquor he had drunk +there he had never carried in his legs. For him these cloistered hours +had meant no harrowing aftermath of remorse, no shrinking memory of +license or ribaldry, but only the strange mental exaltation that had +borne him to success. He sat now outwardly calm and collected, but +mentally in an odd confusion, grasping at strange alert suggestions +that were thronging about him in a lurid phantasmagoria. + +He came to his feet with a start, suddenly aware that the slouching +figure beside him had arisen at the heavy touch of the sheriff's hand. +He took a step forward, the lawyer for a moment again uppermost, the +perplexed mind groping for the conventional expression of professional +regret. But he did not speak. Instead, as the narrow, red-rimmed eyes +stared for a breath into his, Harry's outstretched hand fell at his +side and a painful blur swept across his vision. His unsober, +kaleidoscopic mind had opened to something that lay naked and anguished +beneath the haggard face of the prisoner, something no longer glossed +by sullen scowl and sneering bravado--a concrete fact, perturbing and +vaguely horrifying, which would not express itself in mental symbols. + +With hands clenched and a face like a sleepwalker's, Sevier crossed the +emptying room to the side door, where his motor now waited. "Anywhere, +Bob," he said thickly, "but go like the devil till I tell you to stop, +if it's a thousand miles!" + +As the burnished mechanism shot into pace and the cool wind stung his +face, the early arc-lights above the roadway swelled to great pallid +moons tangled in a net of stars, and in their yellow lustre the thing +he had seen in the prisoner's face suddenly shouted itself to his +brain. He flung up an arm as though to ward a blow. + +"He wasn't guilty!" he gasped. "He never did it, by God!" + + + + +CHAPTER II + +A MAN AND A WOMAN + +The girl whose gaze had for that instant found Harry Sevier's across +the crowded court room left the place with her mind in a conflict of +feeling. She was nonplussed. She had entered for that last hour +sharing intuitively the general belief that the prisoner would be +acquitted: a belief, founded like that of the rest, upon her knowledge +of his counsel. She had seen no straining for the spectacular in what +some had been wont to call "Harry Sevier's pyrotechnics," and on past +occasions on which she had heard him address a jury she had fallen +wholly under the spell of that peculiar magnetism that swayed all +alike. Aside from his continuous success in a calling with which her +whole life had been associated--her father, Judge Beverly Allen, was +Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and his father had been Chancellor +before him--with his brilliant way, his undenied leadership among his +fellows, he had been to her a dominant personality. She had not lacked +the masculine homage of a dozen others of their set, but Harry Sevier +had always been the imminent figure in her thought, and it had needed +no spoken word or promise between them to link her imagination wholly +to a future in which he reigned supreme. So that his failure to-day +had affected her strongly. + +On the dusky court house steps she stopped to exchange greetings with a +group who chatted there. They were full of the puzzle of Sevier's +failure, or laughingly rueful at their own discomfiture, and she +stopped but a moment before a negro coachman tucked her into a +carriage. As he climbed lumberingly to his seat and gathered up the +reins, a heavy, assured figure approached the curb. Cameron Craig was +big and broad and in his strong and arrogant face lines of conflict had +early etched themselves. He shook hands with her with a smile. + +"I didn't know you were in town," she said, with a trace of aloofness. + +"I'm here for only a day or two," he answered. "I had to talk a little +politics with my attorney, Mr. Treadwell. It's his busy day, it seems, +and as the mountain couldn't come to Mahomet, Mahomet came to the +mountain. So here I am at the halls of justice. It's been an +entertaining afternoon--the trial, I mean--but upon my word, I thought +at first I had strayed into a convention of the Daughters of the +Confederacy." + +She smiled, but it came with difficulty. "Oh, court has become a +social dissipation with us. It competes now with auction-bridge and +the fox-trot." + +"You tempt me to steal a purse or two," he said. "I love to hold the +centre of the stage. The only thing I've been charged with stealing so +far is an election, but one never knows to what heights he may rise. +If I pick your pocket will you come to my trial?" + +"If it were _my_ pocket, I'd have to, wouldn't I?" + +He bowed smilingly and turned away, as the coachman flicked the tossing +manes with the tip of his whip. Looking over her shoulder, while the +horses whirled her away, Echo saw his big frame swinging up the steps +into the emptying building, every move expressive of virile strength +and conscious power. + +These were traits Cameron Craig had acquired through direct +inheritance. His father had come penniless, to a small town in the +adjoining state where, with calm assurance and without unnecessary +delay, he had married the neighbourhood's prettiest girl and pre-empted +a worn-out iron deposit with a tumble-down furnace, relic of a series +of disgusted British owners. With the same certainty of judgment he +had uncovered the lost ore, developed the property till it paid a +miraculous dividend, and died. He had been a man of one idea--the +"Works"--and had known and cared for nothing else. The son, however, +with his father's force and will, had inherited, with less praiseworthy +traits, a further ambition. The young Cameron Craig's first free act +after his schooling ended was to dispose of the iron plant and to throw +his money and his brain together into a group which now stood back of +the great Public Services Corporation that held in control the vested +interests of two states, exclusive of the railroads. At thirty he was +a personality that loomed large in organised politics, and might be +depended on to loom steadily larger to the end of the chapter. + +As he entered the old building now he was thinking of the face of the +girl he had just left, with its brilliant beauty and flashing youth. + +"Why not?" he said to himself. "She has birth and breeding, but I can +match them with things the world counts as high. I've never failed yet +to get what I wanted--if I wanted it enough!" His thoughts recurred to +the trial and to Harry Sevier. "Curious that nobody seemed to guess +what the matter was--none but me. But I know what that look back of +his eyes meant. The young fool! To have that gift--every thing right +in his hand--and then to throw it away. For that's what it will come +to, sure as fate, in the end!" + +A hand fell upon his shoulder. It was Lawrence Treadwell, the +attorney, and he followed the latter into a private room and sat down. +"Have you got the new committee list?" he asked, without preamble. + +For answer the other took a closely written paper from his pocket and +handed it over. "Senator Colby sent it down by his secretary this +morning." + +Craig drew his chair to the table and began to make pencilled changes +and corrections, his hand moving swiftly and unhesitatingly. "There," +he said, returning it. "That will be better. Let the senator have it +back to-morrow." He sat a moment silent, his strong white fingers +drumming on the table. "By the way, is this young Sevier likely to +take a hand in the next campaign?" + +"I don't know," replied the other. "I've always expected him to burst +into politics some day. He has a curious hold on people--a wonderful +magnetism. To-day's is the first jury case I've ever known him to +lose. He as well as let it go by default. How he came to handle it so +beats me!" + +Craig might have enlightened him, but he did not. + +"I've concluded we don't want him," he said. "He's uneven: the trial +to-day proved that. Besides, he's too high-chinned--we can't depend on +his type to obey orders. We are coming to a big fight and we want the +docks clear. No overtures to him. We must cut out every man whose +absolute footing we can't count on till the day of judgment." + +The attorney lit a cigar and regarded its blue haze thoughtfully before +he answered. "All right," he agreed. "I should have picked him for +good material. But you're the doctor." + + +Meanwhile the carriage was whirling Echo Allen over the darkening +asphalt. The tired night lay still, watching under dusky lids, the +moon, a great blown magnolia, floating in the limpid sky. As the +horses pounded on, the coachman's voice broke in upon her revery: + +"Reck'n Marse Harry done got dat man clar, Miss Echo, lak he allus do?" + +She drew her furs closer about her throat with a little gesture as +though dismissing a baffling problem. "No, 'Lige; not this time." + +"Sho' now!" he exclaimed, looking back with his thick, blue-black lips +framed to a whistle. "Muss-a been pow'ful guilty ef _he_ couldn't git +him off. Ah reck'n dem yuthah lawyahs 'cluded dey wanter tek Marse +Harry down--he done put it ovah _dem_ so off'n--en dey jes' tek dat +'cused man, en fool eroun', en fool eroun', tell dey done _prove_ it on +him!" + +But 'Lige's sage reflection upon the situation brought no smile to Echo +Allen's face. + +At length the horses came to a great double-gate, lighted with heavy +wrought-iron lamps, opening on a curving drive, into which they turned, +to swing panting up to a wide-porched mansion set in a grove of oaks +and acacias. This was "Midfields," the home of the Allens for four +generations and of the Beverlys before them. Its wide wings and +columned front spoke of old colony days, as did its name of a time when +rolling acres of tobacco instead of suburban streets surrounded it. +Twilight was drifting thickly over it now, and the box-hedged garden, +with its plenteous rose-shrubs and wild sun-dial, was purpled with +shadow. + +Echo jumped down without assistance and ran into the hall, throwing off +her hat and coat and pausing before a glass to pat into place the +rebellious whorls of her springing, gold-brown hair before she entered +the dimly-lighted library. + +It was a wide, pleasant room, with tradition and gentle birth in every +line of its furnishing. The table held an old China lamp of gilt and +_lapis-lazuli_ blue, and the simple, colonial book-cases were of +rich-veined mahogany which held the same shimmering, tawny lights as +Echo's hair and had leaded-glass doors in key with the silver, +glass-prismed candle-sticks on the mantel-piece. A huge old English +screen of painted leather stood at one side. On the dull green walls +were framed steel engravings of the ancestral home of the Allens in +Dorsetshire and of that sturdy ancestor, in lace and peruke, whose +rugged signature is on the Declaration. The place had but one modern +touch--a splendid portrait of Echo herself that hung between two great +windows--the canvas whose photograph at that moment lay face-down in +Harry Sevier's inner office. + +In the room sat her father, the Judge, perusing a magazine. He was a +pale, placid man, straight and grey as a silver-birch, with ivory, +distinguished features that suggested an old daguerreotype and seemed +to call for a silk-velvet waistcoat and a stock. He tossed the +magazine aside as she came to him and stooping, in a swift birdlike way +she had, dropped a kiss on the top of his billowy, grey hair. + +"There you are," she chided, "ruining your poor eyes with fine print in +this wretched light!" + +She turned the reading-lamp higher and drew the curtains. As she +pulled the heavy folds together they swept from its place a heavy brass +bowl filled with Marechal Niel roses, and it fell with a crash onto a +frail Italian desk of dark rosewood quaintly inlaid with designs in +lighter colour, which sat in a corner. + +She sprang to catch it with a cry. "I'm as bad as Uncle Nelson!" she +exclaimed. "How lucky it didn't spill!" She set the bowl back and +passed a hand along the polished desk-top, frowning. "It has made a +terrific dent in the poor old thing!" she said, remorsefully. "It must +have jarred it frightfully. I'm so sorry!" She looked at her father, +who had half risen at her cry. "You were always fond of the little old +desk, though you never used it. I used to love it when I was a child. +It was so mysterious, with its tiny cubby-holes and carvings. Some one +told me once that such foreign desks always had secret drawers and I +used to spend hours trying to find one. Where did it come from? Did +it belong to grandfather?" + +"No. It was willed to me many years ago by--a friend. It was when you +were a baby." + +"How curious," she said, "for a man to choose a piece of furniture like +that! Why, it's as feminine as a toilet-table!" She came and perched +one small toe on the fender, as he asked: "Where's Nancy!" + +"I haven't seen her since luncheon. She was going to tea at Cora +Spottiswoode's." + +"Her father has written me she must come home at the end of the week," +said the Judge. "He says if she doesn't he'll start an action against +somebody for kidnapping--says nobody can fix his coffee just right but +her." + +She smiled. The two families were life-long friends and since their +boarding-school days she and Nancy Langham had exchanged annual visits. +"I'll tell her," she said. "I wish she could stay longer, though it's +lonely for her father, no doubt. I love to have her here. She's--fond +of Chilly, and I've been hoping it--might have an influence over him." + +The Judge sighed. The name of Chisholm Allen, Echo's twin-brother, was +a synonym in the city for debonair devil-may-care. With the likeliness +that kept him popular even among those staid members of society who did +not countenance his peccadillos, he combined a negligence and +dissipation that from his boyhood had made him a thorn-in-the-flesh to +his father. + +"Yes," he said, "she's fond of him. That's why I think she shouldn't +stay too long." + +There was silence for a moment. Then he said in a lighter tone, "I +wonder how Sevier's case came out. It was expected to finish to-day, +wasn't it?" + +"Oh," she answered, "he lost. The jury found against him. I was there +for an hour, just at the end." + +He made an exclamation of surprise, and stole a quick glance at her, +but she had bent down to straighten a shoe-buckle and he could not see +her face. "Ah well," he said, "it won't do him any harm to get a +set-back now and then. Perhaps he needs it. Were there many there?" + +"Half the world," she answered. "I saw Cameron Craig." + +"So he is in town, eh? I must send a note to the hotel and ask him to +luncheon to-morrow." + +She was silent and he said quizzically. "Come, my dear, you mustn't be +such a chin-tilted patrician. 'Other times, other manners.' Craig has +his place, and it's not a low one, either." + +She made a move of impatience. "He's a member of the best clubs in his +own city, and all that, I know. He belongs there. But here it is +different. We are not beholden to him. Why should we go out of our +way to treat him like one of us? He isn't, really. He may be a +University man and he may have travelled all over the world. Yes, and +I'll admit he has manners--_a_ manner, if you like--too. But there's +something that keeps him an outsider just the same. Besides, people +tell unpleasant tales about him." + +Her father cleared his throat. Gossip had been prolific in tales of +Craig as regarded the fairer--and frailer--sex. He had heard the +stories--unsavoury ones, such as inevitably cling to men, whatever +their business or social standing, who acquire the whispered reputation +of the voluptuary. He had himself, however, a singular reserve of +judgment, coupled with an impatient intolerance of scandal. Men to him +were as he found them, till the event proved otherwise. + +"I know what you mean," he said judicially. "He hasn't our traditions +and standards. That's true. He's not born to them. But this is an +uncharitable world, my dear, and half the tattle one hears is apt to be +sheer envy. He is a person of importance. He has a good deal of +influence, as well as money, and is affiliated with men with whom a +large part of my earlier life was associated." + +She hardly heard his closing words: "Influence and money!" she +repeated, with a little shrug. "Why need we bother about them! The +Judiciary, thank heaven! has nothing to do with political influence, +and as for money, I should hate to think that what we have came, like +his, from the United Distilleries!" + +"Echo!" The name fell sharply behind them. + +Both turned--the Judge a little self-consciously--to where his wife +stood in the doorway. She was already dressed for dinner and her dark +corsage set off her white neck and beautifully rounded shoulders--a +cool, statuesque woman, of unfailing poise and manner, with her grey +hair perfectly disposed above a complexion whose tinting was the +despair of many a younger matron. Instinctively the girl's hand had +crept into the Judge's arm, and insensibly the two had drawn a shade +nearer together. + +Mrs. Allen stood looking at them a moment, faintly smiling, before she +said deliberately, "That is a ridiculous way of talking. Please let me +remind you that your father was the Trust's counsel for many years, and +until he went on the Bench." + +"Oh, I forgot--" she began, distressed. "I only meant--" + +"There, there!" the Judge said, frowning. "People feel differently +about those things. You have a perfect right to think in that way, if +you choose." + +"I couldn't think anything _you_ did was wrong," she cried +passionately. "And, anyway, giving a company legal advice is very far +from being in its business. _Every one_ has to have lawyers, of +course. They defend even criminals." + +He smiled quizzically at her argument. "Well," he countered, "I'm +respectable in my old age, at any rate." He had pressed a bell as he +spoke and to the grizzled negro who now entered he said, "Nelson, has +your Marse Chilly come in yet? If he has I'd like to see him." + +The old man shook his head. "Marse Chilly done tellyfoam he won' be +home fo' dinnah, suh." + +The Judge pulled his chin, palpably annoyed, but quick to his resentful +mood, Echo laid her hand caressingly on his arm. + +"Never mind, dear," she said coaxingly. "Don't fret about Chilly." + +Mrs. Allen's voice interposed. "Chilly sent me the message an hour +ago," she said, with an accent that seemed finally to dismiss the +topic. "I think you would better dress now, Echo. Nancy has been in +some time, and dinner's at seven-thirty." + + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE AWAKENING + +An automobile speeding through the starry dark! No hesitant progress +through congested traffic, no frequent swerving for daylight wayfarers. +The city was far behind now--only the clear, well-nigh deserted road, +winding like a tremulous magenta ribbon through the swooping gloom that +seemed to shrink and cringe from the metal monster hurtling after its +golden halo through the eddying dust. + +A practised hand was on the throttle and the yellow-lined face bent +over the wheel was shrewd and keen. There had been no supper for Bob +that night and no evening at Black Joe's billiard parlour, but the +chauffeur knew his master. "Go like the devil till I tell you to +stop," the other had said, and without the word from the moveless +figure on the rear seat, he would obey till the engine stopped or his +hand went numb on the wheel. Hamlets flashed by--huddles of flaring +street-lights--then shadow and blankness again. Now and then a hollow +rumbling marked a bridge, or a jovial, beckoning doorway betokened a +road-house. Ten, twenty, thirty miles. A turn of the wheel and the +car swept into a divergent highway. Another mile and again a turn--Bob +was shuttling back and forth now, fearful of an impossible distance +from home. + +The man behind him sat as if graven in stone. At first, while his +senses instinctively resisted the intoxication, Harry had been +conscious only of blind movement, a frantic flight to escape the +unescapable. Yet his whole body was tense, his eyes never wavered, his +hand was as steady as his chauffeur's. He was sharply conscious of all +about him, every sense recording its message unerringly. He felt the +wind-flung dust, heard the chatter of the exhaust, grasped acutely at +each detail of sight and sound in the reeling panorama through which +they passed with such arrow-like swiftness, under a sky that was a +wild, blue field of silver flowers. Yet the governance of the mind, +the sole arena in which the intoxicant ravened and rioted, the logical +faculty to which sense-impression is but material, was astray. And at +length the intoxication had wholly conquered. + +And with the acknowledged dominance of the sinister thing that held +him, the mental turmoil had swiftly stilled. There had come sudden +composure--a strange, appalling peace, in which was no appreciation of +place or time or fact, but yet a curious exaltation, a sensation of +seeing not through a glass darkly, but with a further mental vision +which knew no material bars. + +Three hours, four hours--and still no sign. Bob stole a glance behind +him. "Wonder what's the matter?" he muttered. "He sure never did want +to go hell-bent-for-election like this before. Lucky I filled the tank +plumb full this morning. She's good for another forty mile, I reckon." + +As he withdrew his eyes he became aware of a red light swinging down +into the road--a railway-crossing. He threw himself forward on the +gear and with a grinding roar the brakes took hold. Plunging and +shuddering, the car stopped dead, its forward lamps jingling against +the warning bar. + +With the sudden stop Harry lurched forward. And, curiously, with the +abrupt cessation of motion and roar, the vast, vague distance through +which his mind had been shuttling, closed instantly up. The baleful +intoxication had lifted as it had come. He did not wake fully at once, +for the breaking of the spell left him in a strange confusion through +which he saw but dimly the outlines of the real present. He found +himself sitting dazed and shaken in his motor--staring at the broad +back of his chauffeur beyond which, an isolated point in the darkness +of the night, swung the angry red lantern of the crossing. He put a +hand to his forehead--what was he doing there? + +It was coming back to him. He remembered the straining trial, the hour +in his inner office--with the little wall-cabinet! He saw the crowded +courtroom, saw himself standing impotent before the bar, saw the +despairing face of the man beside him, the puzzled countenances about +him, the dim lamps. He heard verdict and sentence. He saw himself +turn to gaze into the face of the girl across the court-room--knew the +swift rush of the motor, the blazing arc lights and that final stab of +realisation! + +His lips tightened to shut back something like a groan, as there rushed +upon him a sense of horror, of disgust, of shame. The Harry Sevier he +had been--the Harry Sevier of good repute, of disdain for the +intemperate, of brilliant accomplishment and regular habit, was gazing +with horrified eyes at the Harry Sevier he had unwittingly become, the +slave of the spirit he had so long invoked, whose coarse debauch had +to-day betrayed his client, and sent an innocent man to the wretched +cell of a convict! + +He spoke. "Bob, where are we?" + +The chauffeur stole a quick glance behind him--there was relief in it. +"Penitentiary-Crossing, sir," he said. "There's the Black Maria." He +pointed to one side, where the gloomy vehicle, a wheeled ark with a +narrow barred window set in its rear, waited with its patient mules. + +The train was at the crossing now and the rumble of the brakes swelled +to a vibrant screech, the long dotted line of dimly-lighted windows +shuddering to a stop right athwart the road. A train-man with a +lantern jumped down, followed by a couple of passengers. Harry opened +the door of the tonneau and suddenly conscious that he was stiff and +aching in every joint, achieved the ground and took a step toward the +train. + +Two figures just then emerged from the glare. He saw that they were +linked together by a wrist and as the coat of one blew aside, the +lights of the motor glinted from a nickel star--the badge of a +deputy-sheriff. They had passed him, and the train was moving again to +the _chug-chug_ of the engine, when the officer turned back, biting the +end from a cigar. + +"Could you give me a light?" he asked. + +"Certainly." Sevier took a silver match-box from his pocket. + +The other struck the match, hauling irritably at his lagging prisoner, +and the red light, flaring up, for an instant showed the two faces, the +sheriff's grim and tenacious, and the one beside it--a white, dogged +face, with red-rimmed eyes and a shock of sand-coloured hair. + +Sevier shrank as though at a blow in the face. He drew a sharp breath, +for the sight pierced to the excoriate spot that lay like a live coal +in his soul. There before him stood his client of that day's trial, on +the last lap of his dismal journey, the man whom he, Harry Sevier, had +sent there! Back of this man of the law, with his gleaming star and +pocket revolver, he saw himself standing, the real mainspring of that +blatant enginery. + +The flare of the match fell. "Well, good night to you," said the +deputy-sheriff. + +"Hold on," said Harry. "Can a prisoner use money?" + +"They're not supposed to, but I reckon money talks as loud in a +concrete cell as anywhere else." + +Sevier had taken some crisp yellow-backs from his pocket and now he +held them out--to the jailbird. "Here!" he said. "Take this." + +The other looked at the bills with a suddenly contorted face, then with +a whirl of his unfettered hand dashed them on the ground. "Keep your +money!" he snarled. "I'm a thief--that's what _I_ am now! When I want +money I'll steal it!" + +The sheriff made an exclamation, and jerked viciously on the tethered +wrist. "Don't you mind, sir," he said. "You mean it well, but this is +an ugly one. Lord love you, they'll soon take that out of him over +there! Come along, you," he added to the other, pulling him toward the +Black Maria, "and if you open your face like that I'll give you what +for!" + +Sevier stood an instant looking dully after them, then mechanically +picked up the fallen bills, fumblingly replaced them in his pocket, and +climbed into the motor. He felt his face suddenly hot. In those flung +words his judicial mind recognised the indictment. From the little +wall-cabinet in his inner-office had crept a thing of shame and +humiliation to himself. He saw this now suddenly swell and grow--as +did the vapour from the fisherman's cruse--to a blighting, tentacled +thing, reaching interminably into the future, holding in its coils a +human life of pain, of desperate warfare, of social outlawry. + +He sat down on the leather cushions like one in a dream. + +"Home now, Bob," he said, heavily. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE PRODIGAL + +At Midfields that evening the late moonlight poured a flood of radiance +on the wide columned porch with its climbing roses where Echo sat on +the step, chin in hand, absorbed in her own thought. She was alone. +Nancy had slipped off to bed, her mother had retired to her room and +her father to the quiet of the library and his reading. + +From the kitchens she could hear the muffled clash of table-silver and +the strident voice of Aunt Emily the cook, grumbling at Nelson: +"Yo'-all hurry erlong wid dem ar fawks, now! Speck ah's gwine wait +heah all _night_, yo' triflin' trash, yo'? Yo' heah me--yo' ain' +blind! What yo' 'spose Marse Bev'ly _pay_ yo' fo', anyhow?" From far +down the road, beyond the gates, she could hear the faint twang of a +guitar and the refrain of strolling, darky voices: + + "Reign! Reign! Reign-a mah Lawd! + Reign, Marse Jesus, reign! + Reign salvation in-a mah soul, + Reign, Marse Jesus, reign!" + +These died away with the sharp, eager bark of a dog. Then at length +distinguishable sounds faded and there was only the deep, somnolent +peace of the southern night, with the scent of the roses wreathing the +garden with their intense, mystical odour--only the faint stirring of +little leaves playing hide-and-seek with their shadows, and the thin, +fairy tone-carpet woven by the myriad looms of night insects for near +whispers to tread on. + +Since that homeward ride she had had no time to ponder upon the event +of the day. At dinner the trial had been touched upon but casually. +Now that she was alone, however, it had rushed uppermost in her +thought. It was not that Harry Sevier had lost the verdict: but his +speech had seemed to her, in the tension of the crisis, with a man's +honour and liberty at stake, inconsequential and almost flippant. And +in the measure of her disappointment she had realised anew the depth of +her regard for him. Again and again she pictured the scene in the +courtroom but each time her thought returned upon itself, baffled and +puzzled. + +At length, with a long breath that was almost a sigh, she stirred, and +rising, passed into the library where the Judge sat in the arm-chair by +his reading lamp. "You're a disgraceful night-owl," she said, "and I +refuse to keep you in countenance any longer." + +He smiled at her. "That's right, Sorrel-Top! It's time for +beauty-sleep if you and Nancy are off to ride in the morning. Just +give me my eye-shade, will you, before you go?" + +She brought the green crescent and snapped it on his forehead. "There! +You haven't told me how you like my dress to-night. It's a new one." + +He looked. "It's beautiful." + +She turned about before him. "I do choose well sometimes, don't I?" + +"You do everything well, my dear." In his tone now was a quaint and +curious humility which always touched her when she discerned +it--something of utter fondness and dependance--and she smoothed his +iron-grey hair, one of her characteristic endearments, as she kissed +him good night. + +Upstairs Echo opened the door of her room softly. It was hung in +blue--that shade which one sees in a Gainsborough ribbon, a Romney sash +or a Reynolds sky--and its furniture was of simple white, with large +pink dahlias trailing over the chintz window-curtains and +chair-cushions. In the dim night-light the triple mirror of the +dresser reflected the carven four-post bed, in one of whose pillows +Nancy's dark head was already buried. + +"Is that you, Echo?" + +"Yes, it's I. Were you asleep already?" + +"Almost," yawned Nancy. "I _shall_ be in two shakes of a lamb's tail. +Has Chilly come home yet?" + +"No, not yet." + +"Do you think he's really at the club, Echo?" + +"Of course I do." + +"Men are so queer!" sighed Nancy, drowsily. "We had such a lovely +evening--all except Chilly's not being there." + +Echo slipped off her gown and drew out the pins from her hair, letting +it fall in a shimmering cloud to her waist. Then in the moon-light she +drew a deep chair before the open window and began to brush out that +wonderful mass of stirring gold that curled and waved about her bare, +round shoulders. Below her the garden lay, a mass of olive shadows, +wound in cloudy golds and misty greens, sprinkled with moon-dust and +drenched with the dizzying scent of roses and honeysuckle. All was +lapped in the utter quiet of the night--only the swift wing of a +night-bird shook the darker clump of ivy that marked the sun-dial. A +long time she sat there, the brush parting and smoothing the bronze +mesh with long sweeping movements, gazing into the whisper-haunted +gloom and listening to the measured breathing of the girl behind her +that seemed to form a rhythmical current for her own thoughts. + +All at once in the hush there came the clashing of the gate at the foot +of the drive and jovial "good-byes," mingled with a hilarious voice +asseverating that its owner had had "the time of his young life." + +She bit her lip. "It's Chilly!" she whispered, with a frowning look +over her shoulder. + +She listened intently. There was the crunch of an uncertain step on +the gravel, the sound of a stumble from the porch--then the slamming of +the front door. + +The dulled sound reverberated through the old house. It roused Nancy +and she sat upright in the drift of silken coverlets, her eyes heavy +with sleep. "Is it Chilly?" + +"Yes. He has just come in." + +"Is he--?" + +"I'm afraid so, dear." + +The younger girl caught her breath. "Oh, I hope your father has gone +to bed. He's so hard on him!" + +Echo turned. "How can he be otherwise?" she said, sadly. "It's so +often and often it happens, nowadays. Won't you try and influence him? +He cares for you, darling!" + +Nancy's hands were clasped tight about her knees. She stirred +uneasily. "How can I, Echo? A boy has to have a little bit of a good +time once in awhile. I wouldn't want him to be a molly-coddle! He +won't be any the worse for it when he gets older and settled down." + +"The worse for it!" The words fell sadly. "Don't you think he is the +worse for it already? He's making no progress with his law-study and +he's been two years out of college, now. There's nothing to blame but +his drinking--and the company he keeps. What will be the end of it? +Oh, Nancy, you have a responsibility. Every woman has with some one +man. If women only wouldn't countenance it as they do!" + +"But, Echo--you talk as if Chilly was--as if you thought he was doing +something disgraceful. Why, he's a gentleman; he _couldn't_ be +anything but that, no matter what he did!" + +Echo came to the bed and sat down beside the other. In her filmy +night-gown, wound in the mist of her loosened gold shadowed hair she +looked like some ethereal thing in the moonlight. + +"Ah, that's just what so many say! That a gentleman is a gentleman +whether he is drunk or sober! It's not so with other things. Is a +gentleman a gentleman whether he lies, or cheats at cards, or not? +Isn't there to be any standard, really? Don't you see that there never +will be any penalty--as far as drinking is concerned--until women +_make_ it? Listen, Nancy. The year I came out, I went to a dance--my +first big one. There was a boy there who followed me about all over +the floor. He wanted me to dance with him, and he was--he could hardly +walk. At first I was frightened, but at last I grew angry. I asked a +lady why he was not asked to leave the floor. She seemed quite +astonished and indignant. 'But,' she said, 'don't you know who he +_is_? That's the son of General Moultrie!' It was Cale Moultrie. You +know what became of him, don't you?" + +"Yes." Nancy's voice was muffled. "But Chilly--" + +"Oh, my dear, there was a time when Cale drank no more than the others, +and everybody liked him--as they do Chilly. It's coming to be the same +with him, I'm afraid. There's no penalty for him yet because he's +Chisholm Allen--because he's father's son!" + +She stopped, caught by the sound of a sob. In another moment her arms +were around the frail little body and the flower-like face was pressed +hard against her breast. + +"I don't care if he _is_ d-d-dissipated," said Nancy passionately. +"I'd rather have him come to me d-d-drunk than any other man sober! +He's just Ch-Ch-Chilly, all the same!" + + + + +CHAPTER V + +THE UNLAID GHOST + +On the ground floor of the old house all was silent save in the +dining-room, where a single electric bulb threw into garish relief the +dismantled table with a bowl of fern glowing like a fountain of +emeralds against the dark wood. It lighted the Chippendale sideboard, +before which Chisholm Allen confronted old Nelson, the butler. A +cut-glass decanter of sherry was in one hand; the other was alternately +fumbling uncertainly with the stopper and pushing back the persuasive +fingers of the aged negro. His straw hat was tipped awry, his face was +flushed and his eyes unnaturally bright. He was laughing immoderately. + +"You old black stick-in-the-mud!" he said. "What's the matter with +you? Think _you_ own that decanter, eh? Well, you don't, not by a +long shot. _I_ do--Chris'mas present from the Duchess. Hope to die if +it wasn't. Leggo, you virtuous old chicken-thief, and give me a +tumbler!" + +"Now, Marse Chilly!" The low voice was deprecating and appealing, and +there was love in it too--the deep, changeless affection of the +old-time negro for his white master. "Yo' _knows_ yo' don' want no mo' +dat ar. Yo' done had er plenty at dat ole club down town. Ef yo' tuck +away any mo' now, yo' gwine have er haid lak er rainbar'l on yo' +shouldahs in dee mawnin'! Yo' _knows_ yo' is!" + +Chilly's hand dragged at the black detaining fingers. "What do _you_ +know about heads? Take your fool hands away, I tell you! I'm only +going to take a couple of swallows." + +"_Ah_ knows dem ar swallers," pleaded the old man. "Yo' go erlong tuh +baid. Hit's long pas' midnight. Marse Bev-ly's in dee lib'ry." + +"Oh bother!" said Chilly irreverently. "He's gone to bye-bye long ago. +Shut your face or you'll wake him up." + +"Fo' dee _Lawd_, Marse Chilly!" stuttered the old man. "Ah heahs him +comin' _now_! Ah sho' does!" + +"You can't bamboozle me!" laughed Chilly. "Old Huckleberry's been +snoozing this hour! If he does come, you and I'll drink his health. +Eh? Wonder what he'd say!" + +He was not to be left in doubt, for at the moment the hall-door opened. +His father stood on the threshold. He was dressed and the green +eyeshade was on his forehead. + +"We will dispense," he said in a tone of quiet hardness, "with a +ceremony which, however filial, is somewhat ill-timed. Nelson, I think +you needn't wait up any longer." + +"Yas, Marse Bev'ly. Yas, suh." The old man went to the door, +hesitated and came back. "Is yo' sho' yo' don' want nothin' else, +Marse Bev'ly?" + +"Nothing further, Nelson." + +"Yas, suh. Good night, Marse Bev'ly. Good night, Marse Chilly." This +time he went out, closing the door behind him with exaggerated caution. + +"Come now, Judge," said his son, still mirthfully. "There's no masonic +funeral going on in the bungalow, is there? Can't one have a harmless +night-cap without being excommunicated?" + +His father looked at him from under the green shade with gloomy +disapproval. The address did not tend to mend matters; his son was +wont to reserve the judicial title for moods of especial mellowness +such as to-night's. He noted the flushed face and sparkling eyes, the +general air of goodnatured recklessness that so clearly spoke the +nature of the other's evening's pleasure. + +"We'll discuss that to-morrow." He crossed to the wall and laid his +hand on the electric switch. "Good night." + +Chisholm still smiled without apparent resentment. "I guess you +weren't ever as young as I am, Judge, anyway. You seem to think I'm a +rotten bad lot just because I like to take a glass now and then and go +out with the boys. You drink _your_ mint-julep all right enough. And +I'll bet whoever you had to dinner to-night took as much as I've had +under my vest. The only difference is _I_ haven't had any dinner. It +does make a difference, I assure you." + +His father's hand was still extended to the wall. "I said good night, +Chisholm." + +Chilly shrugged his shoulders. "Oh, what's the use?" he said +listlessly, and went unsteadily out by the rear door. + +The Judge snapped off the switch, and putting out the light in the +library, ascended the stair. The hard look had deepened on his face. +As he gazed at that nonchalant epitome of ribaldry he had thought of +other men who had so often been grouped about the table in that +room--men of tempered habit, of standing and achievement. His own son +had contempt for such company. It bored him. He preferred to "go out +with the boys" and to come home in the small hours--as he had to-night. +So he was thinking as he entered the room above. There he stopped in +surprise, for across the threshold stood his wife. She was in her +night-gown, over which she had thrown a robe of pale crêpe with lace at +the neck and wrists. Her face showed a heightened colour and her lips +were trembling. He drew forward a chair. + +"I thought you were asleep long ago," he said. + +She declined the seat with a gesture. "I heard your voices. What did +you say to Chilly?" + +"I said 'Good night,'" he answered heavily. "That was about all." + +Her lip curled. The glance she gave him was critically cold. When she +married Beverly Allen she had loved him--in so far as she had been +capable of loving. To her marriage had meant the assumption of woman's +predestined place in the social fabric, the inevitable change of habit +which time brings to all, with its widened orbit and opportunities. +She had been drawn to him by every instinct of selection which took +count of name, standing, worldly endowment and mental equipment; but +there had been behind it no throb of maidenly impulse, no thrill of the +great current that feeds the romance of the world. The one point at +which life for her caught and focused had been the son, whose +misconduct stood so sharply out against the spotless Allen name. He +was her one weakness, her love for him an unreasoning passion that had +swayed her from his birth. To her his transgressions showed as venial, +his delinquencies as but the forgivable errors of youth. The few +instances in which he had been openly called to task by his father had +been sharpened in the latter's memory by her resentment. But on none +of these occasions had her husband seen her so moved as now. He did +not know that for many minutes she had stood on the dark landing +listening to the murmurous voices, and that now she resented what +seemed to her a deliberate evasion. She spoke with slow, even point: + +"As a monologist Chilly is a distinct surprise. Was he saying 'good +night' also?" + +Under the unaccustomed anger of her voice the Judge's pale face +flushed. He took off the eyeshade and set it on the table, as he +replied evenly: + +"Chilly is not himself to-night, Charlotte. Does it matter +particularly what he said?" + +Beneath his voice now there was a kind of subterranean compassion, a +note almost of entreaty, as though in this trouble that touched them +both he could have wished to comfort her, if, indeed, she had made that +possible. + +She made an involuntary movement--not a sign that a chord had been +touched, but rather a mark of agitation. Chilly was the one subject +upon which she could not bring to bear the tempered reason which +otherwise marshalled her even life. It seemed to her now that she was +being thrust aside, in the interest of some new plan of discipline and +coertion. She turned swiftly on her husband. + +"I suppose you think it should make no difference to me!" Her eyes +blazed. "You are so sure you understand Chilly! You--his father--have +you ever really known him all his life? Does he ever come to you when +he is in trouble or needs advice?" + +Her voice held a bitter sarcasm and again the flush swept up the +Judge's pale face. But his voice was emotionless as he said, "Chilly +never felt the need of advice from any one. He goes his own sweet way." + +"That is just it!" she said. "You set yourself so far above him. You +have such a contempt for his pleasures and so thoroughly despise the +company he keeps. Suppose he has a taste for liquor. He is still a +gentleman, I believe. But you, with your solemn rectitude and your +touch-me-not self-righteousness--you would drive him to the very people +and places he ought to keep away from!" + +He stared at her. "I have never regarded my repugnance to his habits +as inducing him to further excesses," he said slowly. "Nor have I set +myself up as preacher. Perhaps I have never understood him as--you do. +I only know that his ways are not my ways. He has had every advantage +that education and environment can confer. He is older than I was when +I began practice. But what is he making of his life? He thinks of +nothing but playing fast and loose at country-houses and loafing at the +club and acting the fop and the fool generally!" + +Her shaking hand was plucking at the lace at her throat. His every +word had been a live coal laid to her resentment. "Is that the worst +you can say of him?" she asked. "Can't you call him sot or black-leg?" + +"Not yet." He was feeling now a dull anger at her scorn, at her +persistent disapproval. The throb of sympathy he had first felt had +been frozen by her icy reproach. "There are other things I wish to be +able to say of my son. I want him to be more than a decorative +philanderer. I want him to be a man--one to whom men may look for +manliness, and women for honour!" + +She had grown pale to the lips. "'And women for honour!'" she +repeated. "As _I_ looked to--_you_!" + +He had flung out his arm with a characteristic gesture, but at her last +words it suddenly stiffened and remained, as if it had been frozen in +the air. Slowly it dropped at his side as he stared at her with ashen +face--a look of shocked and disconcerted inquiry. For the exclamation, +as at the swift slash of a blade, had torn away a veil, woven of time +and habit, that covered an old wound. For twenty years by tacit +consent this hidden thing of the past had never been acknowledged by +any word or deed between them. Now a single sentence had laid it bare, +quick and quivering and mutually confessed. They had been married +twenty-two years, and if in that early period he had discerned any lack +in her, he had given her no reproaches. On her part, she had fulfilled +what she esteemed her whole duty, and in her own mind stood blameless. +And he had had his profession. But in the end starved nature had +reasserted itself. There had come to him a passion, swift and terrible +while it lasted, to which he had surrendered wholly--till death swept +it from him. The gall and wormwood had been sweetened then by the +birth, in merciful coincidence with that loss, of his twin children. +He had thought the episode buried forever from sight and hearing, but a +later chance had discovered it to his wife, and in her own +immaculateness she had been able neither to forget nor to forgive. It +had made no difference in her life before their world. Cold and +perfect and correct, she had held her way, but from the day when she +had faced him with his secret in her hand, their hearts had been +strangers to one another. He had climbed high and she had risen with +him. And in twenty years no word had fallen from her lips to open that +old tomb--till to-night when the heavy doors swung ajar at the echo of +that one exclamation. + +"As _I_ looked to--_you_!" There it was--the old ghost, called up to +haunt his present as it had waylaid his past. His hand fumbled for the +discarded eye-shade and adjusted it as he slowly said: + +"I have never counted myself a pattern, Charlotte--least of all for my +own son." + +She caught the note of pain and weariness now in his voice, and +something new and unaccustomed stirred for one brief moment in her +heart. She had struck harder than she had intended. But she had lost +control at a critical moment and old bitterness, that had never been +tinctured with the sweetness of charity and forgiveness, had sharpened +her tongue. Now his shocked white face smote her with a sense of +self-reproach whose very strangeness threw her momentarily off her +poise. For a fleeting second words trembled on her tongue that might +have dissolved the icy barrier between them. But the golden second +passed. + +"That is generous," she said with a distant laugh. + +"No doubt Chilly will profit by experience, if not by precept. Shall +you be at court to-morrow?" + +"Yes," he answered. "I have a hearing." + +"You will prefer the horses, then," she said, turning to the door. "I +will take the electric for my shopping. Good night." + +He opened the door for her. "Good night," he said. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +THE JUDGE SITS IN THE LAMPLIGHT + +In the silence of the room the Judge stood for a moment with his hand +at his lips, as though he tasted blood. The summer night outside was +very still. The curtain before one of the windows swayed gently in the +air and from the acacia trees on the lawn he could hear the sleepy +twitter of an oriole. He turned off the light and went into the hall. +There at one side stood the white, panelled door of his wife's room. +It was shut. It came to him that it stood for a perfect symbol of that +cold immaculateness of hers which had so long denied him the living +bread of sympathy. She could forgive anything in her son, but nothing +in her husband. For twenty long years they two might have dwelt at +opposite ends of the Milky Way, and it seemed to him suddenly +monstrous, whatever the cause, whosesoever the fault, that they, being +man and wife, should yet be so far apart. + +He went slowly down the stair again, his hand, shaking a little, +slipping along the polished banister. The dim night-light made the +lower hall a place of ghostly shadows. He re-entered the library, +moved to the table and turned on the reading-lamp. Then, lifting it to +the limit of its silken cord, he threw the electric glow upon the +canvas that hung above the mantel, studying it intently. + +"Mine!" he muttered, with a sort of fierce satisfaction. "Mine, every +inch--mine, not Charlotte's! My blood gave you that curve of brow and +those full lips and that deep, dark blue of eye--they are of my side, +not of hers! You, at least belong to me!" + +He returned the lamp to its place, and turning, cast his glance at the +little Italian desk in the corner. His lips trembled. At that desk +she had sat--the woman knowledge of whom had sharpened the sword of his +wife's never-dying disdain. The woman who had come into his life too +late! He thought of their meetings, few enough, indeed. How often he +had wondered how life would have turned for him, if at the end she had +listened to his desperate pleading, and gone with him along that +alluring way that had drawn him like an opal path among Italian +asphodels, flinging to the winds social standing, reputation, career, +friends, honour, all! If she had said "yes" to that wild letter he had +sent her--the one to which she had vouchsafed no reply--which might +have been written in his very heart's blood! + +He looked again at the painted portrait of Echo, in her splendid youth +and clean heritage: the answer was there. + +He sat down before the little desk, stretched his arms upon it and +bowed his head upon them. "You were right, Eleanor," he sighed. "You +were right. But somehow it's been so long!" + +He felt a fluttering touch upon his hair and started up. There before +him on the desk lay a faded leaf of paper--a page closely written over +in twirly, dim writing. He lifted it up and held it to the light, his +nostrils catching a scent wraith-frail and delicate, like a dead +pansy's ghost-- + + +No--no--no! Why did you write it? Why did you put it into words? For +now I must keep it always. I cannot destroy it. You _knew_ I would +not--_could_ not---let you do what you beg me to! Never, never! I am +not so mad. Nor are you, really. It is not your best self speaking in +this letter. Sometime-- + + +His gaze became fixed. He gave a hoarse cry--a mist was before his +eyes. He snatched at the top of the yellowed sheet--it was dated +twenty years before, and the hand-writing, how familiar! He laid the +leaf flat in the lamp-light and read it through, with every nerve +throbbing to a memory that had started afresh, as instinct as though +days, not years, had sifted their dust upon it: + + +Sometime you will thank me--will think of this only as a ghastly +indiscretion from which you were caught away in time. We do not make +the world we live in, and it is a thousand times stronger than we are. +No, if we play the game we must stick to the rules. To think of +overstepping that boundary, in such a desperate fashion, gives my +fastidious sense a strange recoil--something like that curious shame +and confusion that associates itself with a dream in which one finds +one's-self scantily clad in the midst of wondering strangers! No--no! +I do not think I shall send this letter--but perhaps I may at the end. +For I am going away. I sail to-morrow. Shall I see you +again--ever--ever? What will you think-- + + +That was all. It broke off abruptly as though the writer had laid it +aside, never to be finished. + +In the silent library the Judge looked at that mute witness as at one +risen from the dead. Twenty years of absence and silence--twenty years +out of his ken, save to the thriving memory! For how long the hand +that had penned those lines had been dust, yet the poor symbols of ink +and paper persisted to confront him now! How had the sheet come to be +on that desk that she had bequeathed him? It had not lain there a +moment before. + +He brought the lamp and examined the desk attentively, pulling out +every tiny drawer, sounding each carved partition, twisting and tugging +at every projecting portion of the ornamentation. With a thin, metal +paper-knife he explored each warp and crevice. But his search was +fruitless. If the leaf had slipped from some crack--loosened, perhaps, +by the fall of the brass bowl upon it that day--the old desk kept its +secret. + +A strange feeling stole over him, the feeling of mystery that comes to +one with some sudden apposition of incident that thrills with a sense +of an overpowering meaning in a circumstance in itself banal and +trivial. Something of her proud and passionate spirit she had etched +into those lines. Might it be that spirit, somewhere in the great +void, reached out to him through this silent witness--to say that love +does not wholly die? + +He gently spoke her name. "Eleanor! You forgave me for writing--that. +If you hadn't you wouldn't have left me this desk when you--died, away +over there in Florence! So I've got your letter at last." + +He sighed again and groping for his big chair, sat down, with the sheet +of paper spread out upon his knee. + + +On the upper floor Mrs. Allen tapped lightly on Chilly's door and when +there was no answer, opened it softly and entered. At the whisper of +his name he started up in bed. + +"Duchess!" he exclaimed. + +The pet name, as always, touched her. It was a perennial tribute to +that stateliness and dignity which she had made her own. She came and +sat down on the edge of the bed and he caught her hand and held it to +his lips. "You shouldn't have come," he chided. "You'll take cold." + +"I heard your father talking to you," she whispered. "You--you know +what he dislikes so. Why can you not be--discreet?" + +Chilly moved uneasily: "Oh, I know," he said. "But I can't always be +giving an imitation of a quaker meeting! I'm not a child." + +"You must not anger him," she said. "I--for my sake, I wish you would +be more careful." + +He patted her hand. "All right, Duchess! I'll mind my p's and q's. +But you must go back to bed now. Don't you worry about me." + +She bent down and kissed him on the forehead before she glided from the +room. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +ARROWS OF DESIRE + +"Here is the new rose," said Echo. "Its name is the Laurant Carle." + +Cameron Craig looked--at her, not at the blossom. She was in simple +white and as she stood there in the perfumed garden, vivid, elemental, +tuned to the wonder and passion of living, her slim figure outlined +against the dark green shrubbery and her face and gold-bronze hair +touched with the slanting sunlight, she seemed herself some great, +rare, golden flower in a silver sheath. Lines he had somewhere read +sprang into his mind: + + "Bring me my bow of burning gold, + Bring me my arrows of desire," + +and, contained man that he was, he caught his breath at the sudden leap +in him of the thing that had been covered and hidden there so long, +something fine and keen as flame, that set his habitually cool blood +beating under his eyelids. + +"It was not the rose," he said. "I had another reason in asking you to +come here." + +"Yes?" Her voice was evenly inquiring. + +"It was to ask you if you will marry me." + +She took a quick step backward; a look of amaze had sprung to her face. +"I?" she exclaimed. "You want me to--_marry_ you?" + +"Yes. Is there anything strange in that?" + +She looked away. In all her thoughts of the man before her there had +not lurked this possibility. She had been bred among youth who, +whatever their other vices, maintained a chivalric ideal of womankind +which excluded fast-and-loose conduct; and the whispers that clung +about Cameron Craig--set, as they were, over against his force and +undeniably brilliant attainments--had lent her opinion of him a certain +cold contempt. And now here he was--he of all men!--saying this to +her! And it was no hasty impulse: she read that in the steady, +confident eyes, the hard, heavy jaw, the steadfast, deep-lined face. + +She felt his waiting gaze. "No," she answered, slowly. "Perhaps it is +not strange. It is only that the unexpected seems so." She looked at +him curiously. "Why did you ask me--to-day?" + +"The opportunity came," he said. "It must have, sooner or later." + +"So you have intended for some time to say this to me?" + +"Since I first met you, a year ago," he answered. "You have two things +that I want--as I have their complements." + +She considered this a moment. "Forgive me," she said then, "but I am a +very curious person--as well, it seems, as a very blind one. Would you +mind telling me what are those two qualities that you imagine I +possess, which you value so highly?" + +"Breeding, first," he replied, "and all that it implies. You represent +a stock." + +She nodded gravely. "And the other desideratum?" + +"Beauty. You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen." + +"And--the complements of these things, that you possess?" + +"Money," he answered. "And the power it gives--the accessories which a +woman like you must have if she would really live. I think you don't +doubt that my wife shall have these things." + +She shook her head. "Not in the least. Indeed, I am sure she will. +But you see, Mr. Craig, I happen to be not at all the sort of person +you think I am--the kind you wish to marry." + +"I'll risk that!" he flung her. + +"The proof is that you ask me--as you have. The things you have to +offer seem overwhelmingly attractive to you, no doubt, but I'm afraid +they mean much less to me." He could not see the look that was in her +face now, for her head was turned away. "I have no longing for money. +I could be contented in a mountain lean-to, with morning-glories +instead of an orchid conservatory. I could cook my own meals on a +gas-stove and live in one room over a hardware store--with the man I +loved. I don't care particularly for what you call 'place' either. I +could be happy enough on a prairie--with the man I loved. But love +must be there, Mr. Craig." + +"Do you doubt my love for you?" he asked. + +"You had not cited it," she rejoined, calmly. "You spoke of money +first--" + +"Because I have lived long enough to know that it is the paramount +requisite in most women's eyes." + +"Your estimate of me by the mass was flattering," she said with gentle +satire. "Have you been so busy making this wonderful money of yours +that you think it can take the place of everything?" + +He made an abrupt, almost angered, gesture. "Surely you know money +means--has meant--nothing to me!" he exclaimed. "I am rich, yes. I +dare say I could buy and sell almost any one you know. But it was +never the main thing. It was _winning_ that counted. It was the game, +and money was only the counters. I played to win and I have won. And +wealth was a stepping-stone to other things." + +His voice had subtly altered and he drew closer to her where she stood, +moveless and straight against the dark foliage, her gaze averted. +"Then--I met you! I have known many women, but they have been nothing, +less than nothing, to me! Business has been the only thing that really +counted. But since I met you, the whole world has been changing for +me. Even my work isn't the main thing to me any more. The main thing +is _you_!" + +She lifted her eyes, wide with the swift sense of the +unexpected--touched now with an odd, disquieting prescience. His voice +was no longer the cold, even voice of the Cameron Craig she had known. +There was passion in it. She saw his big hand tremble. + +"There has never been a day or hour since then when I have not wanted +you! You have entered into my blood and my brain, and the want of you +has coloured all I have thought and done! If this is love, then I love +you--Echo, Echo!" + +She shrank perceptibly at the name on his lips. "Stop!" she said. +"The love you talk of must be mutual. I do not--care for you in that +way. I never could!" + +"That makes no difference to me!" he protested. "I know what I want--I +always have. And I want you." + +"No," she said. "It is not the real _me_ that you want, but we can +pass that by. The important fact is that you have offered your last +price and the bid is declined." + +He looked at her with a sudden flash in his eyes. "Do I deserve that?" +He had grown pale to the lips. + +"Yes, you do. I have told you that I should never love you. Yet that +means less than nothing to you. You have apparently not considered my +possible love as a requisite in the case. It is 'breeding' you want, +and beauty--and for that you make your offer. You propose purchase, +not exchange, Mr. Craig. Well, I am not for sale!" + +He flushed to his hair a dark, heavy red. He appeared to be +controlling himself by a fierce effort. "Don't answer me now," he +said. "Let me speak to you again later." + +"I have answered you," she replied, "once and for all. You will please +consider it final." + +[Illustration: "I have answered you," she replied, "once and for all. +You will please consider it final"] + +A whirl of what seemed almost rage shook him; with a single stride he +reached her and seized both her hands. "Is there--another man?" There +was what startled her now in the harsh, hard voice. + +She stiffened. "Well," she said, "--and if there is?" + +At the chill quiet of her voice all the vicious strength and +intolerance of the man blazed out. "You are right!" he said savagely. +"It could make no difference to me! I will not take your answer--do +you understand? In time you will give me a different one. I have +waited for other things and I have had them in the end. I can wait for +you!" + +He released her hands--so violently that she fell back a step. Then, +while she stood regarding him in shocked and indignant amaze, summoning +all her forces to meet this fury that had both astonished and repelled +her, his face swiftly changed. The flush of anger ebbed, the flash +died in his eyes. + +Once again his accustomed self, with the steady, confident eyes and +swing of shoulder, he drew aside to let her pass and followed her along +the box-bordered path to the piazza. + + +As they entered the blue-parlour, a lady very smart in black-and-white, +and a sailor-hat whose girlish brim youthened her mature beauty, rose +from her seat with Mrs. Allen and Nancy Langham, Echo's house-guest, a +slight, glowing girl of nineteen, with eyes like marigolds in shade. + +"Well, Echo," she said, "I thought you never _would_ appear. I just +ran in to remind you that you and Nancy promised to come to my dinner +to-night at the 'Farm.' I've asked some of the youngsters out for a +little dance afterward." She smiled a brilliant recognition to the +heavy figure behind her. + +"Mr. Craig!" she exclaimed. "So you are in town! How nice it would be +of you to come too. Or do you find country-club gaieties too stale and +unprofitable?" + +He bowed over her hand. "My dear Mrs. Spottiswoode!" he said. "This +is my lucky day! I shall be more than delighted!" + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +THE THRUST + +The "Farm," as the Country-Club was popularly known to its habitués, +was a long, three-storied structure of red brick on the selvedge of the +southern suburb, set in a grove of maple trees facing a lake whose +still depths were stirred by budding water-lilies, like the breasts of +young girls. With its golf-links, and tennis-courts and its ball-room +which formed an L at one side, its white, balustraded verandahs, it was +the favoured resort of both the frivolous and athletic; its monthly +dances were the gayest of the season's informal functions and on +Saturday evenings its row of little dining-rooms, that looked out on a +gentle slope of shrubbery and gravelled walks pricked out with paper +lanterns, were favourite resorts for small dinner-parties. + +Mrs. Spottiswoode's dinners were apt to have a pleasurable sprinkling +of youth and sobriety and to-night the dozen of the younger set found +sufficient foil in the fashionable rector of St. Andrews in clerical +dress relieved only by the tiny amethyst cross that swung upon his +waistcoat--in Senator Peyton, party-whip at Washington and one of the +state's distinguished citizens, with piercing sword-grey eyes under +brows as black as midnight--and finally in Cameron Craig. + +As Echo Allen had said to her father, the latter was not "one of them." +The phrase to her had been an instinctive expression of that subtle +sense of caste that had been born in her, springing from long lines of +gentle ancestors that linked back beyond the days of the Old Dominion. +But the distinction lay deep in the mental formula of the man: it was +not to be perceived in externals. To-night, in his faultless +evening-dress, with his keen, strong face and assured manner, he had an +air even of distinction that well became him, and the instant's painful +embarrassment that Echo felt as her hand touched his in their first +greeting yielded quickly to an unwilling admiration of his poise and +control. If that flare of passion in the garden had left its traces, +they had been successfully covered. He was once more the Cameron Craig +she had known--till yesterday. + +But beneath that unruffled exterior Craig's every pulse was in tumult. +At table he found himself opposite Echo. The decorations were red +roses and in a ruby gown with a single rose in the coil of her tawny +hair, she seemed to him an inherent part of the scheme, a ruby pendent +to the rich, shimmering setting. There had been many women to whom he +had been passingly attracted--his tastes had been catholic enough in +that regard! But he had never seen one whom he had wished to marry. +He had spoken truly when he said that the women he had known had really +meant nothing to him. His licenses had been but incidents after all. +They had not ministered to the mental side of his nature, whereas this +passion had taken swift and complete possession. As he saw her now, +her cheeks flushing to the glow of the candles and her eyes like softly +lighted sapphires, he felt open wide within him an abyss that thronged +thick with distempered imaginings. There was another man! She had not +denied it. And with the thought there grew in him a slow, cold hatred +and determination. + +Yet his face, as Echo glanced across the roses, betrayed no sign of +disquiet. He was apparently listening amusedly to the small-talk of +his partner, Nancy Langham, in a gown of pale gauze that made her look +like a small, eager tiger-lily caught in a hampering cloud. In the +interstices of conversation Echo could catch whiffs of her laughing +nonsense: + +"Isn't Dr. Custis quite _wickedly_ handsome for a rector! I've been +instructed _not_ to ask him if he is related to Martha Washington. The +man across from Mrs. Spottiswoode is Richard Brent, he is 'The Herald,' +and a power in the community, I believe. Our hostess is wearing the +new wave; it costs a lot, but they say it's guaranteed to last six +months. And to think," she sighed, "that Melissa, my maid, spends a +dollar a week trying to have her wool ironed _straight_! The man with +the goatee, who looks so Spanishy, is Mr. Horace Leighton, the New York +artist who is doing the mural paintings for the new City Hall here." + +"So there isn't any one here who isn't anybody!" Craig observed. + +"Only me," she said. "The reason I'm asked is because I'm frivolous. +I'm supposed to offset the feast of reason with bubbles and froth." + +"At any rate," remarked the senator, "seriousness is not to fall in +arrears. Down at the other end they have actually got to politics." + +Echo's glance followed his. Their hostess was holding a glass of wine +between her eye and the candle-light, which splashed a bright crimson +ray on her pretty face. It was the rector who was speaking: + +"As for myself, I'm afraid I'm a friend to all the old, hackneyed +arguments. 'If meat maketh my brother to offend,' you know." He +pointed to his wine-glass, which, with the arrival of the soup, he had +turned upside-down. "You see I am consistent." + +"Politics?" queried Echo. "It seems to be only teetotalism." + +"Ah," the senator answered, "but it's coming to be the same thing +nowadays." + +"One understands the individual objection on moral grounds," said Mrs. +Spottiswoode. "That's a matter of personal belief and conscience. And +the Church must be above criticism--must take the sterner course. But +for those of us who don't think it wrong, the other arguments seem +so--so local. I suppose drinking does keep the negroes from doing as +much work as they might, but it's hard on the rest of us to have to cut +our cloth by the farmer's pattern! We here, for example, at this +table, are to go without our sauterne because he has trouble in getting +in his tobacco." + +"Exactly," agreed the churchman. "The greatest good of the greatest +number. And isn't that true democracy, after all? But of course the +agricultural problem is the least of it--there are the figures of +poverty and crime. The two are twin-brothers, of course. And drink is +the father of them both. Will, character, determination--a man with +these may overcome the habit. But these are just the qualities that +men in the mass lack. When a weak man falls our system keeps him down. +I once heard Thomas Malcolm--every one here knows of him and his work, +I presume--say that for the average drunkard to reform with a saloon on +every corner is about as easy as to hoist one's-self out of hell by +one's boot-straps. I'm inclined to think he is right. And I never saw +a drunkard yet--a real Simon-pure drunkard, I mean; not a mere +sophomoric tippler--who wouldn't jump at the chance to reform if he +could. But he has no more chance of winning out now than a gambler +against loaded dice." He paused, with a little gesture. "But then," +he added, "the modern political movement for prohibition has made every +one familiar with the basic arguments." + +Treadwell, spruce young corporation attorney and cotillon leader, +looked up interestedly from the other end of the table; the hostess's +fan had begun to flutter--a sign of agitation. For Cameron Craig's +affiliations with the great Trust were well-known, though presumably +not to the clergyman, who had met him for the first time that evening. +Craig, however, seemed quite unconscious of personal implications. + +"Do you seriously think, sir," he asked, with the faintest trace of +irony, "that the statistics of crime would be materially lowered in +your state if it went 'dry' next year?" + +"I do," replied the rector with emphasis. "And not only lowered. They +would be practically wiped out. There wouldn't be enough left to +constitute an item in the appropriation for public printing." + +"Naturally, however," Craig observed, "as the state has always been +'wet,' exact data is lacking to assist one's speculations." + +"On the contrary," said the other. "Every jail furnishes them. I +think," he went on, turning now to Treadwell, "that it is the +experience of every criminal lawyer that liquor, in some phase or +other, has been back of the larger proportion of cases he is called on +to defend." + +The young man nodded. "I never had any experience in criminal cases," +he said, "but I should think you were not far wrong. What do you say, +Brent?" + +"I agree with you," the journalist answered, "but my view of course is +a superficial one. It is a pity that Harry Sevier isn't here; we +should have got a valuable opinion." + +"You may be gratified then," said the hostess. "Though Mr. Sevier +couldn't come to dinner, he will be here for the dancing." + +The senator spoke. "Sevier! I heard him in court yesterday." + +"So did I," commented Nancy, aside. "I gave up an auction-bridge for +it, and I wish I hadn't. It wasn't exciting at all." + +Mrs. Spottiswoode looked relief--at last the talk had shifted to safe +ground. "He lost the case, I hear," she said. "I wonder what was the +matter. Wasn't he in good form?" + +The senator looked thoughtful. "In one way, yes," he replied +judicially. "I confess, though, I had rather expected something +different, but just what I scarcely know." + +Nancy turned her small, piquant face. "_I_ know. We all expected Mr. +Sevier to do what he has done so often--but didn't to-day. Oh," she +exclaimed almost angrily, "while he was talking along, like a machine, +I could have shaken him!" + +"That _would_ have furnished the sensation!" said Treadwell. "And I +should think it might have had its effect on the jury, too. Juries +_can_ be intimidated. I wish you had tried it." + +She made a little face at him across the nodding roses, then turned +more earnestly to her partner. "I don't know anything about court +matters or criminal trials, but from where I sat I could see the man he +was defending. He looked so hopeless and--scared! I wanted to stand +up and scream across the room: Can't you _see_? Look at the poor thing +there! Make the jury _feel_! You were thinking the same thing too, +Echo, I could see it in your face." + +Echo lifted her eyes. In the candle-light her cheek held a rising +flush. She looked across at the rector. "What do you think, Dr. +Custis?" she asked, evenly. + +He responded promptly. "Perhaps the explanation isn't so far afield. +I presume the man had confessed to him and Sevier knew he was guilty." + +Echo was conscious of a wave of relief at an explanation so simple and +credible. It had never occurred to her to question the accuracy of +other verdicts Harry had won in the past. Each had seemed to her the +triumph of a just cause over a baleful combination of circumstance, the +brilliant freeing of truth and innocence from entangling error and +maleficent scheming. But if this man was guilty and Harry had known it +beyond question, what other outcome had been possible? At the moment +she saw in that even, cold presentation of the court-room only the +conscientious determination of the lawyer, who, as the law prescribed, +stood by his client to demand that justice, if she must exact her +penalty, prove conclusively every jot and tittle of her ground. + +Craig's eyes had been regarding her steadily. With the spreading of +that flush upon her cheeks a covert, laughing allusion that had come to +his ear on the court-house steps on the day of the trial darted to his +mind. A cool, keen certainty rushed through him. Sevier! Fool that +he was not to have thought of him before! This young _flâneur_--and +drunkard!--this petty trifler with his profession! Was that white +indignation of the garden, this vivid flush, for _him_? He leaned +forward, his heavy voice, intense and well modulated, addressed the +clergyman: + +"An interesting hypothesis, but the implication seems hardly safe. A +lawyer's responsibility to his client is a very grave one. He owes +none toward the commonwealth--the state's attorney takes care of that. +Any less conventional view should appeal to a lawyer, I think, as +dangerous and uncalled-for." + +"What do you fancy was responsible for Sevier's method of defence in +this case?" asked the rector. + +There was an instant of blank silence. The conversation had absorbed +the lesser talk and other voices were hushed. Craig's look was set +upon the long oval damask with its glistening silver and baskets of +brilliant fruit, its leaf thin glasses with languid beads rising in +their liquid amber, its knots of fern and bonbons. His big fingers +were twisting the stem of a goblet. When he spoke it was as though he +had not heard the question. + +"I attended a trial once," he said, "at a frontier town in the far +southwest, a border community where procedure is very primitive. The +man was charged with murder. He was a school-master, I believe, and in +a quarrel with some local bully or other, had killed him. I was in the +place on some land-business and went to the trial for mere amusement. +The whole neighbourhood was there. Both men, it appeared, had been in +their cups, and self-defence seemed an adequate plea. Acquittal was +regarded as fairly certain--the more so as the District Attorney was +the bosom-friend of the accused man, and everybody knew it. There was +almost no attempt at evidence, which didn't seem surprising under the +circumstances, and the state made the baldest farce of its +cross-examination. The real interest came after a rather long recess +that preceded the final speeches. The prisoner's counsel was a young +man with a rough, direct address that caught the people. He had them +pretty well with him, too, and when he sat down there seemed very +little reason why the jury should even leave the box. The speech had +been a fairly long one and as it had grown dark, candles had been +brought in and set about--two on the judge's desk and some on the +tables." + +Echo repressed a start. It had come to her suddenly that there was a +significance in what he was saying--a suggestion that a quick +clairvoyant sense told her was principally for her. In the few words +he had, with apparent unintention, sketched the actual scene in the +court-room of the day before, and while reversing its elements, was +picturing, in unfamiliar guise, its identical situation. She felt her +face slowly harden, and turned her profile toward him, her hand playing +with a spray of fern beside her plate. + +"During the whole speech the District Attorney had sat in his chair, +with his chin in his collar and his eyes closed, never moving. When +his turn came he didn't rise; in fact, it was clear that he had been +asleep. A laugh went round and the sheriff put a hand on his shoulder +and shook him. He got up, looking confused, and while he blinked at +the candles, some one in the audience called out, 'Never mind, old man. +If you can't make a speech, recite a poem.' It was curious, but the +remark seemed to give him a clue, and he began to recite Hood's _Eugene +Aram_." + +Craig paused a moment and sipped from his wine-glass. All at the table +were leaning forward intently. Treadwell was frowning at his plate. +No one spoke; only a fork, dropped from Nancy Langham's fingers, +rattled against the cloth. + +"It was a strange sight," went on Craig, "and one I have always +remembered. You must picture the crowded court-room, the gloom, the +flaring candles, and the whole uncanny episode, to realise the effect +that was produced. The man was by nature a marvellous actor--he would +have made his fortune on any stage. At first it seemed as if he didn't +know quite where he was, but then the ballad itself gripped him and he +rendered it, acting each line, as I never heard it before or since. I +had never realised what was in that poem. Very few there, I suppose, +had ever heard it in their lives, and they listened in a fascinated +silence while he rolled it out to the last line. + + "'Two hard-faced men set out from Lynn, + Through the rain and heavy mist, + And Eugene Aram walked between + With gyves upon his wrist.'" + + +He paused again. "Oh, finish!" gasped Nancy Langham. "I don't like +that story. What then?" + +"When he ended he walked out of the court-room without waiting for the +verdict." + +Echo's head turned toward him. "They found him guilty!" exclaimed Mrs. +Spottiswode. + +"Yes." + +"And you say the District Attorney was his best friend?" asked the +artist. + +"So I was told." + +"And yet wanted to convict him?" + +Craig shook his head. "No, I didn't say that." + +"Then what," inquired the rector, "do you take it, inspired him to such +an extraordinary action?" + +"Oh," said Craig, and as he spoke, for the first time he looked full at +Echo. "It all came out afterward. He didn't realise what he was +doing. He was drunk." + + +For an instant Echo's breath stopped. In the unexpected dénouement she +had guessed, as at a lightning-flash, Craig's real purpose. Sharply, +baldly introduced, the tale stood forth intrusive and malicious, an +implied slur upon a man who was not present to refute it. Her whole +being flooded with fierce resentment, mingled with an angry amaze that +of all there no one else seemed to have caught the insinuation. To the +rest it had been at most a _gaucherie_, a parallel which, if perhaps +not felicitous, had been without significance and would be readily +forgotten. Therein lay the added sting, that Craig had so accurately +judged the outcome. He had guessed how it stood with her and Harry +Sevier, and counting on her keener sensitiveness where the latter was +concerned, had barbed his shaft for her alone! + +The next instant, however, the tension broke with every one talking at +once. From this babble the senator emerged with a negro story about a +trial with "exterminatin' circumstances," which brought a ripple of +laughter, and presently the hostess gave the rising signal. + +The room opened upon the ball-room from whose further end already came +the squeak of tuned catgut, and beyond this spread the invitingly cool +verandas, now beginning to fill with filmy gowns that showed pallidly +against the evening dusk, where the bouquet of masculine segars mingled +with the dewed scent of shrubbery. Here in the increasing numbers, +unobserved as she thought, Echo stepped down onto the cool dark turf +and following one of the little meandering bush-bordered paths, came to +a rustic bench over which a paper lantern threw flickering +rose-coloured shadows. On this she sat down, struggling to regain her +lost composure and grateful for the sense of quiet and the cool +inspiration of the water, over whose margin the moonbeams danced in +elfish ecstasy. + +In another moment, however, the silence was broken. A step sounded on +the path, and she looked up to see Craig standing before her. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +THE TURN OF THE LONG LANE + +Echo came to her feet, all her blood on fire. In her resentment it had +seemed to her that by very silence she had made herself party to that +slur upon the man she loved, and she had been aching fiercely to repel +it. + +Craig tossed his segar away. He made no apologies for having followed +her from the piazza. "May I sit here and talk to you?" he asked. + +She remained standing. "Mr. Craig," she said with quiet emphasis, "I +am glad you have come to me here. I have something to ask you which I +could not have asked you--there." + +He bowed and stood waiting. + +"I fancied," she went on, "in certain of your remarks at the table a +lurking innuendo. It is difficult to reply to such a thing. You would +make it possible if you would put it in a more direct form." + +"Your own observation does not appear to err in directness," he +answered, after a pause. "I am afraid I must ask you to descend to +plain English." + +"In the course of the dinner you told a story." + +"Henceforth I shall congratulate myself on my skill as a _raconteur_." +His tone was mildly ironic. + +"It seemed to me--and I think I am of average intelligence and not more +fanciful than most--that by that story you intended to convey, an +insinuation against the reputation of a gentleman whom I do not care to +hear maligned." + +He looked at her with smouldering eyes. He was feeling admiration for +her quick, hot southern blood and resentful spirit. It was part of +that splendid type of womanhood that he had determined to make his own. +And that it was now displayed in defence of the man whose weakness he +despised and whose personality he hated filled him with a dull, +glooming fury. His lips twisted. "Maligned?" he repeated, in an +accent that was a question. + +"That was my word," she said steadily. + +"You appear to attach an extraordinary importance to my tale," he +retorted, with grim sarcasm. + +"Do you deny that there _was_ innuendo?" + +He smiled. "I can endure even that suspicion, since it is such a +compliment to my own subtlety. May I ask, in my turn, in whose +interest you so valorously take up the cudgels?" + +"Your story directly followed a reference to Mr. Henry Sevier's +handling of a case in court here. The unexpected outcome of the trial +in your tale was due to the fact that its chief character, though no +one realised it, was under the influence of liquor. The implication +seemed obvious--that Mr. Sevier was not himself when he conducted his +defence." + +He shrugged his shoulders. "You are the only one who has drawn such a +conclusion?" + +Her pale face blazed. "Oh, I understand! You intended the inference +for me alone!" + +"Well?" he asked, with aggravating calmness. + +"Did you insinuate that, or did you not?" Her pent-up anger was +tearing now at her self-control. + +He laughed, a short, jarring laugh. He felt an insane desire to seize +that slender, unyielding body in his great arms, to rain kisses on that +vivid, scornful mouth with its short upper lip, and bend or break her +like a sapling to his savage will. "Suppose I did," he said stonily. +"What then?" + +"That was a contemptible act!" The young voice cut like a whip-lash +and involuntarily Craig's big fists clenched. "And if I were Mr. +Sevier, I would horsewhip you!" + +A sound from behind them fell across the surcharged quiet. Both turned +astonished faces--Echo's quivering with feeling, Craig's set and +stormy--upon the man whose name had just been spoken. Neither had +heard his step as he came quickly along the grassy path, nor had Sevier +guessed the situation till those pregnant sentences sent the blood from +his heart. He had thought the secret of his failure unsuspected. The +realisation now that one, at least, had guessed the truth had been +instantly swallowed up in the bitter knowledge that it had fallen to +her--the one woman in the world--to defend him, who was undeserving! + +Craig regarded him with a veiled smile that was half a sneer. The +apparition had come at a fateful moment. Then his glance passed to +Echo. "May I ask," he said, "whether you have yet cross-examined Mr. +Sevier?" + +He bowed and went quickly up the path toward the lighted piazzas. + +There ensued a silence in which two minds travelled far. Echo had sat +down upon the bench, her face averted. Her anger had faded out and her +heart was hammering at the thought that Harry had heard, in her defence +of him, what was in truth a confession. Across the aching interval +broke the wanton bubble of a whip-poor-will. + +"Echo--" he said in a muffled voice. + +She looked up at him in the feathery light. "You heard--I wish you +hadn't. Yet I couldn't help it! That ridiculous slur! But you can't +possibly imagine that--that any one who knows you--" + +He stopped her with an abrupt gesture. "Wait. I want to--I must tell +you something." + +"No, no!" she protested. "You shall not! I need no assurance. Do you +think that I--" + +He shook his head. But for that last sneering look of Craig's, that +satiric challenge, he might have maintained a silence that would have +seemed to her only a proper pride in himself and a deserved contempt +for the whisper of malice. But the look and sneer had flicked him on +the raw, had called to some element of naked honesty deep within him. +In that second he had known, shame-stricken, that whatever the outcome +there could be no evasion between them. There must be the truth. He +was no longer what he had thought himself, but he would be no +malingerer. + +"Thank you," he said, "for that! Yet what Craig wished you to +believe--was quite true." + +She stared at him unbelievingly. "True!" Her lips formed rather than +spoke the word. + +"Yes. I _was_ under the influence of liquor. But for that I should +have won the case, I believe." + +"But," she faltered, "I don't--understand. Why, I never saw you +in--that condition in my life! I was there. I--I heard you speak." + +"It is not the first time," he said steadily. "Nor the second, nor the +third. Liquor helped me to win my cases. I thought I had made it my +slave when it had made itself my master. This time it failed me. And +I--I failed my client," he added bitterly. + +She did not catch the note of pain, of deep contrition in his voice. +Her own hurt was too keen. She only heard the high-built structures of +her own ideals crumbling down about her feet. "So Craig was right!" +she said under her breath. + +"Don't think it is easy for me to tell you this," he went on. "It is +because I must. All my life I have cared very little what others +thought. But--you--I care what you think. I never knew how much till +now, when I have thrown your good opinion of me in the dust!" He bent +and took her hands. "Echo, is it the death of your ideal of me?" + +Her lingers trembled in his grasp. Pictures were flashing before her +mind--frost-stung October days when they had galloped with the baying +hounds, over the blown, tinted leaves and russet fields--winter +skating-parties on the frozen river, summer dances like that of +to-night, for which the music was now swinging a hundred yards +away--always it had been she and Harry Sevier. He had been so superior +to the blandishments of the smaller vices. Others had failed and +fallen; only he had remained on his pedestal, a type of brilliant +accomplishment. She saw now his success as unenduring, fictitious, his +talents besmirched with the vice that was most hateful to her. "Not +the first time, nor the second, nor the third!" In their own circle +she had seen the dreadful cycle more than once repeated--the slow, +baleful fastening of habit, the struggle, the piteous, ignoble yielding +and the final slipping down to degraded depths from which there could +be no resurrection. There was Chilly, her own twin-brother, with his +feet set on the same primrose path. And now was it to be Harry Sevier? +She shuddered and drew her hand from his clasp. + +"I--see," he said, in a slow, even voice. "You can't trust me." It +was not the Sevier that had kissed her hand who spoke now, but one whom +that gesture seemed to have flung an infinite distance from her. + +"Can you trust yourself?" she asked. + +Harry's tongue touched his lips--as it had done in his inner office on +the day of the trial, when he stood looking at her picture on his desk. +Since that day he had known no breath of the periodic craving. But +now, curiously, he felt his mouth growing all at once arid and dry with +the old slinking thirst. _Could_ he trust himself? The question +seemed to thrust itself at him with a malevolent significance. How +much of his will had he indeed, surrendered? Did he know? + +There rose up suddenly in him a savage resolution. Not another drop +upon his lips--never, never! Not for the sake of success, not for his +very life, never so long as he lived! + +He took her hands in both his own, leaned down and kissed them. Then, +without a word he went rapidly from her. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +AFTER A YEAR + +Lawrence Treadwell, the attorney, sat in his office negligently smoking +a segar and staring down through the open window upon the busy +thoroughfare beneath. Outside was the spring sunshine and the smell of +growing trees. Just across from the building stood the city's new +Opera House, over whose ambitious entrance was still stretched a canvas +sign advertising a mass-meeting held the evening before under the +auspices of the Civic Club. + +He read the lettering reflectively as he blew out clouds of the +fragrant, opalescent incense: "Protest Against Machine-Rule." He +smiled. The old revolt of the Quixotic handful against the entrenched +forces that had governed the city for a generation--one more of the +popular ebullitions which punctuate modern progress, the familiar +periodic dust-storms from whose turmoil the Old Guard emerged, moveless +as ever in the saddle, to a new campaign dictated by the mighty +Over-Lord, the great Public Services Corporation which, through its +multiple ramifications, assumed to control the state's franchises, to +dictate its significant legislation--even to influence its judiciary. +As he read the words on the canvas bellying in the breeze, his smile +was cynical. + +Yet the smile had a touch of wistfulness too. The movement had grown +out of the general unrest, the keener public conscience, that had +accompanied the political renaissance that in the past year had been +sweeping over a dozen commonwealths. In the old southern city, wherein +principles were not yet become mere hypocrisies and folk still +preserved old-fashioned political ideals, it had attained to the +prestige of well-known names and engaging personalities. Their +forefathers had been men to whom honour and cleanliness in public life +had meant all things and who had governed as naturally as they had +breathed. And there were many among these to whom the new era, with +its open sneer at public trust and its subservience to great +aggregations of wealth selfishly employed, had become an increasing +reproach. The man who gazed down from the office window had long ago +made his choice. He had no illusions. He knew to what allegiance he +owed his present position. It had been the reward of long and faithful +service! Yet sometimes still the bonds chafed--sometimes still the new +spirit that was stirring abroad struck through his ingrained habit, +calling to him to do the impossibly fanatical thing! + +There was a knock at the door and a man entered. It was Cameron Craig. +He responded briefly to the lawyer's greeting and coming to the window, +stood a moment beside him, looking down at the hurrying wheeled +traffic, the loitering pavement pedestrians--and the flapping canvas +sign. He laughed a little, but without mirth. + +"You were there, I suppose," he said. + +Treadwell nodded. "Yes. It's tilting at the windmills, of course." + +"They began too late," said Craig grimly. "The ticket is safe enough +this year. But next year--the Gubernatorial campaign--if they only had +fire enough to keep the blaze going till then, they might give us +trouble." + +The other did not answer. His eyes had rested briefly on Craig's face, +then again had sought the window. He was thinking that his visitor had +not changed for the better during the past two months. The fact, +indeed, would have been apparent to a casual eye. The virulent force +and will were no less noticeable, but there was now a kind of glaze +over his face--a certain fierce and sullen quality that seemed a +reflection of inner bitterness. + +The judicial eye clove to the fact. Since that far-away night at the +"Farm," Craig's passion had never loosened its grip. It was +characteristic of the man that he had on that occasion played the only +card in his hand, not blindly, but by instinct and without hesitation. +But while he had apparently gained his point, it had been borne to him +gradually that his very method of play had lost him infinitely more +than he had gained. In the mind of the woman he desired he had +transgressed the rules of the game, and the realisation maddened him. +Never since then had he heard her name coupled with Harry Sevier's. +Never had he seen them together. This had given him satisfaction. But +if he had shattered her regard for the man whom he now hated more +tenaciously than he had ever hated anything in his whole life, the fact +had seemed to hold no advantage for himself. On several visits to the +city, he had invented reasons to call at the Allen house, but he had +soon learned that he was not to meet Echo there. He had, however, seen +her elsewhere more than once--when her gaze had gone by him as if he +had been empty air. Though his veins burned with the fever of the +famished, he had not ventured to challenge that cold aloofness. But it +had rankled and stung him almost beyond endurance, till he had come to +thirst avidly for some kind of test between them--for action, whatever +the result might mean. And the fierce desire that raged within him, +feeding on itself, had left its sinister traces on his face. + +Abruptly Craig withdrew his gaze. "I see young Sevier held forth last +night. The last time I heard him was in court, just a year ago. The +young fop! He'd do better to stick to his lawbooks--though I hear he +has no cases anymore." + +"It's his own choice," the attorney answered coldly. He liked Harry +Sevier and he resented the other's tone, no less than the words. "He +could have a new client every day if he wanted. As a matter of fact he +hasn't taken a case since the one you speak of. He fought for six +months trying to get through an appeal on that. It was the first +criminal case he had ever lost and it cut him up some, I fancy. Of +course it's ridiculous to take it so to heart, but I swear I can't help +liking him for it! He's not merely a fop, either. In my opinion he +comes mighty near being just what that crowd at the Civic Club have +been looking for." + +Craig's eyes had not left Treadwell's. "In what way?" he asked. + +"As a spokesman. They know what they believe and what they want to +fight for. But they've been inarticulate. Most of them are +blue-blooded old fogies, with their souls full of fine ideals, but with +no leader. In him (and in that speech of his last night he threw in +his lot with them absolutely) they have a finely trained legal +mind--for with all his old fire-works Sevier always had that--and a +natural orator besides. You should have heard him last night! For two +hours he held that great audience in a perfect spell. 'The finest +exhibition of southern oratory since the war' the papers called it this +morning, and I tell you, Craig, they weren't far wrong!" + +He stopped, somewhat embarrassed by his own enthusiasm, and wondering +at the dark look on the other's face. Perhaps to hide this, Craig +turned away. His fingers were twitching and for an instant he was not +wholly master of himself. When he spoke, however, he had regained his +governance. + +"After all, it wasn't the future of this anti-machine campaign that I +came to talk about. There's something nearer home that is worrying me." + +"What's the trouble?" + +"The Welles-Scott case decision. It is to be handed down on the first +of May. It must be in our favour." + +The other looked surprised. "But surely it will be." + +"It's not on the cards. I thought I knew the Judge, but there are +signs that I'm afraid of." + +The attorney sniffed incredulously. "Judge Allen!" he exclaimed. +"Why, the trust made him. And it keeps him made, I should think, too." + +Craig shook his head. "He's been talking lately. We've had warnings +from some who are very close to him. This decision _must_ be what we +want it to be. Voters are thinking more than they used to. If these +Civic Club people keep up the agitation--particularly if they link on +to the prohibition movement, as they are likely to do--the distillery +may become a live issue in the next state campaign. That's the great +danger. And this Welles-Scott case strikes at the heart of the matter. +If the Trust loses this decision it will be the signal for a crop of +bills in the next legislature that will cost us a cool million to +fight. And they may lead anywhere. I tell you we _have_ to have it!" + +The other mused a moment. "The Judge, of course, can't be reached +in--in ordinary ways." + +"Of course not. He's not venal. We've been able to depend on him so +long because he has grown up with the Trust--he was its counsel for +many years--and its interests were his. He thought with it. His mind +ran in the same groove. But Beverly Allen, the Trust's counsel, and +Judge Allen of the Supreme Court are different propositions. I always +thought this test case was a mistake! But I was overruled. Well, +we've got to have the decision. If one way won't bring it about, +another shall. Something will have to--persuade him. He must have a +weak spot. We must find it, that's all." + +"His life's been an open book, if that's what you mean," said the +attorney, slowly. + +"Few men's life are open books," returned Craig, with cynical +shortness. "There's apt to be a page pasted down somewhere. That part +of it is your business. If there's any such page in his case, you find +it! I don't care how small a page it is, or how long ago it was pasted +down. If it's there I want it!" + +"His record was combed with a fine-tooth comb when he went on the +bench," said Treadwell. "The Trust wanted a man that the opposition +couldn't get anything on. That was before your time, of course. I +went over the report myself. There wasn't anything there--nothing but +the vaguest suspicion of an old love affair that was polished off +twenty years ago." + +Craig turned sharply. "A love affair! After his marriage?" + +"Why yes, I think so. But there weren't any details. And the woman +died abroad long ago." + +"What was her name?" + +Treadwell looked at him curiously. A faint flush had crept over his +face. "See here, Craig," he said, "after all, there's a limit to +decency. At the most it was nothing but a passing infatuation--an +innocent one. There was not the faintest breath of scandal. And as I +told you, the woman is dead." + +Craig's eyes were boring into him. "Treadwell," he said in a hard +voice, "you don't seem to understand. This is a big game, and there is +no limit! None! And I intend to win it! _What was her name?_" + +The other leaned to knock the ash from his segar. There was a tense +pause before he replied. "I have forgotten." + +"Where are the old reports?" + +"They were destroyed." + +Craig looked at him an instant, his eyes like sparkling points of +steel. He opened his lips to speak, but he did not. Instead, with a +shrug of incredulous contempt, he caught up his hat, turned to the +door, opened it and went out. + +Treadwell listened to the heavy footsteps descending the stair. Then +he went and shut the door. + +"The hound!" he said under his breath. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +CRAIG FINDS HIS WEAPON + +From his chair in the library at Midfields that night, just beyond the +circle of radiance cast by the big reading-lamp, Cameron Craig looked +steadily at the Judge from under his bushy eyebrows, as the latter said: + +"Yes, it is true that I was for years affiliated with the interests you +represent. I was their attorney. The connection ceased when I, +myself, severed it, eleven years ago." + +Craig's lips, that had been set in a hard line, parted in a satiric +smile. He was leading doggedly up to what he purposed to say. "To its +profound loss," he said from the shadow. "You had cogent reasons, no +doubt." + +The other mused a moment, his pallid, scholarly face averted. "I'll +tell you, if you like," he said at length. "But you will understand +that I challenge no one else's convictions. I assume to sit in +judgment only upon my own." + +Craig nodded. "Of course." + +"I made the connection we are speaking of," continued the Judge, "when +I was a young man, just beginning practice. The liquor problem was +young then too. Communities did not take it too +seriously--particularly in the south where drinking was a matter of +course with gentlemen. The white-ribbon movement was in its infancy +and John B. Gough had hardly been heard of. To me--to the men I +knew--the 'temperance' agitation seemed a mere recurring fad, fostered +by pious and well-meaning persons, which cropped up--a kind of moral +seven-year locust--at periodic intervals. People lived more or less as +their grandfathers had lived before them on their plantations. And +their fathers had been fox-hunting, hard-living 'three-bottle men' +right down to the war. I had all the habits and prejudices of my +class. Liquor seemed to me like many another thing that was made to +minister to individual weakness, but was not in itself obnoxious. And +the decanter was never empty on my side-board. Yet even then the new +element in politics and in every-day life--the sentiment against +liquor--was growing. Times were slowly changing, men's outlook was +changing, and I knew--long before I admitted it to myself--that I was a +part of an industry which the best thought of the community no longer +approved, and that men who championed it were swimming against a +deepening and strengthening social current. I was stubborn, but at +last there came a day when I--changed too." + +His voice had softened, had suddenly become surcharged with feeling. +He leaned over the table and caught up a small oval photograph, set in +a black-leathern frame. It was a picture of his son Chisholm, as a boy +of perhaps fourteen. He held it out in a hand that slightly trembled: + +"That is why I changed, Craig. One night Chilly came home--drunk. I +had never seen him intoxicated, had never guessed that he could so far +forget himself. He was a mere boy, at school! In that moment the +sharp truth came to me. Shame stared at me from my own door-step. I +saw the text of the sermon that had been preached into my deaf ears--in +my own son!" + +He broke off abruptly and set the picture back on the table. When he +spoke again his voice was more even: + +"That hour, as I sat here in this same room, I--saw. Could anything +else have opened my eyes? Perhaps not. But that did. I saw all at +once what I had been bolstering. It was no longer a theoretical +question of the harm of the club-bar and the corner saloon to the +community. They were making a drunkard of _Chilly_! The Trust +furnished their stock-in-trade. And I had been the Trust's paid +tool--a part of its brain in this state--had guarded it from error, +shown how far it could go with impunity under the law, had even made +possible its organisation as it exists to-day! I, Chilly's father! +That night I wrote out my resignation as counsel. I mailed it before I +slept." + +There was a slight pause. Craig's lowering look had been watching the +other curiously. The emotion in the older man's voice had touched no +chord of response in him. Rather it roused contempt--not for the son, +whom he considered a brainless weakling, but for what seemed to him an +arrant attempt to evade the issue that stood so sharply and insistently +in his own mind. To him no man's motives were pure. The man before +him had been not the Trust's servant, but its creature. Had not the +Corporation, behind all, set him on his high seat? Was he fool enough +to think that he--Craig--was not aware of that? It had expected him to +pay in kind, when the need arose, as now it had. And did the other +think to throw dust in his eyes with such mawkish sentimentalism--to +evade this old tacit obligation by a flimsy pretence of moral scruple? +Craig spoke: + +"And--the Corporation. What did it say? Eh?" + +"The president of the board came to see me. He was good enough to ask +me to reconsider. But I had made my choice." + +Craig leaned forward, his arm on the little inlaid desk beside him. +"Let me finish," he said with deliberate meaning. "The board, +accepting that decision with the keenest regret, desired to make your +retirement the occasion for showing in a tangible way its appreciation +of your long and faithful service. A seat on the Supreme Bench being +vacant, the Directorate proposed, unless your taste pointed otherwise, +to use such influence as it might possess, to gain for your name the +consideration in that connection which it deserved." + +A look of surprise had crossed the Judge's face as he began. A +sensitive flush swept it as he ended. "If you imply that my seat was +offered me, Mr. Craig, even tentatively, at that time, or in that +connection, you are in error!" + +Craig's sneer was open now. There was no more pretence. "If not in so +many words, in effect! Pshaw! Do you mean to pretend you would have +had that appointment if the Trust hadn't backed you for it? It owned +the state bag and baggage then, as it does now--and as it will continue +to do! It put you on the Bench and it has kept you there, and you know +it!" + +The Judge was on his feet now, his flush faded to pallor. He deigned +no answer to the flung assertion. "What is your object in coming to me +to say this?" His voice was deep and resonant. + +"Just this!" Craig lifted his arm, his big fist clenched, his eyes +narrowed. "You were the Trust's counsel and confident for twenty +years--till it put you where you are now! Do you think it did that for +nothing? It _made_ you, Beverly Allen! And now it has reason to +believe that you intend to knife it in the back--to drag the ermine it +put on your shoulders into an incendiary hue-and-cry started by +demagogues who aim to destroy a great industry!" + +"What do you mean, sir?" The Judge's tone was icy. + +"I mean the Welles-Scott decision!" Craig said in a low, deadly voice. +"That"--his clenched hand smote the light desk at his elbow with a +savage blow--"must be _ours_!" + +For an instant there was blank silence. The Judge stood aghast, his +very speech frozen with indignation. To him his judicial calling had +an element that was almost sacred. This man--to whom he had given the +hand of friendship, who had the _entrée_ into the exclusive circles of +southern gentility--this man assumed to lay coarse fingers upon his +vestment of office, to question his integrity as a Judge! He dared to +believe him, Beverly Allen, cheaply venal--a puppet, whose legal +rulings were at the beck and call of corporate influence! The room +seemed suddenly stifling hot. He turned to the window, flung the +curtains wide and drew a gulping breath of the fresh air. + +He had not seen Craig's sudden start. For at the smashing blow of his +fist on the fragile Italian desk, a curious thing had happened. Its +catch loosened by the jar, a tiny carven panel had fallen with a little +click, and a thin sheaf of yellowed letters had dropped and spread +fan-wise beside his hand. The backs of the envelopes were uppermost, +and across the top one was written in a dim, twirly hand and faded ink, +the initials _B.A._ + +A thought darted like cold lightning through Craig's brain. +"B.A."--Beverly Allen! Whose were those old letters? The initials +were in a woman's hand. What if they held a clue to the old story +Treadwell, his attorney, had spoken of? A quick instinct inspired him. +His hand closed over them quickly--went to his breast--as the Judge +turned from the window. + +The latter had regained self-control. He stood erect and tall, his +leonine head thrown back, his eyes shining, and in his face a look the +other had never seen in it before. "You have presumed," he said, "to +say to me what I would not have believed any representative of your +corporation would dare to say. And you have taken advantage of my +hospitality to say it in my own house. I choose now to believe this +message an individual one, springing from a personal and base +initiative rather than from the responsible Directorate which I once +served. 'Once,' I say. For I serve it no longer. I am now a member +of the Judiciary of this commonwealth. Because the corporation +furthered my candidacy, you assume that it 'made' me. Perhaps it did. +But it never owned my conscience or my integrity! Nor does it now, +thank God!" + +As he spoke he had stepped to the wall and pushed a bell. "Nelson," he +said, to the entering butler, "show this gentleman to the door." + +Craig had risen to his feet. He looked at the other an instant with +livid face. Then he went rapidly to the hall and snatched up his hat +and stick. The outer door closed heavily behind him. + + +In his room at the hotel Cameron Craig took the sheaf of letters. +Under the electric-light he drew the folded leaves one by one from +their worn envelopes and spread them open before him. A look of +chagrin crossed his face. No woman had written them; they had been +penned by the Judge himself--he was familiar with the heavy, +characteristic hand-writing. Were they, then, only some old letters to +his wife, perhaps? He was holding one leaf to the light. Suddenly his +eye caught. He made an exclamation. His face lighted with amaze and +savage exultation. + +What a weapon blind luck, ironic fate, had put into his hands, in the +very face of the man for whom he had craved it! For on that leaf, +etched in remorseless ink, was what would open an old grave, drag into +the daylight the corpse of an ignoble passion, cast scorn upon the +writer's name and blight and wither present and future! How little, +after all, the tricks of the body changed! Twenty years--and yet, _his +letter_! + +What matter when it had been penned, or whether the woman were long +dead to whom he had once written that blazing indiscretion? He, the +jurist of spotless living and good repute--to be shown forth to the +world as a moral fraud, a husband and father who had once stood +shamelessly ready to fling home and reputation on the scrap-heap in a +disgraceful flight "without benefit of clergy!" The woman presumably +had scorned his offer--since she had sent him back his letters--and yet +on the page still stood the black intention, in black and white! What +incredible folly had led him to preserve it? Twenty years ago--in the +dead past--and yet there it was, to be used in the living present, the +blunt handwriting, recognisable at a glance, damning and beyond denial! + +He laughed aloud. It was Echo's father whom he held in his hand! If +he did not come to terms, so much the better, since the blow would +strike her too. She thought herself above him, did she? What if this +story should be spread abroad in yellow headlines, babbled of in club +and boudoir, smirked at on street-corners? Would she hold herself so +high then? Well, if he was so far beneath her pride, that should bring +her to his level! He felt no prick of shame at the base move he +contemplated, no smart of pity for the ruin it should bring. Ambition +in which was no tincture of honourable scruple wove, with the desire to +humble the woman who would have none of him, to a resolution as +unyielding as steel. + +He gathered up the letters and put them carefully into his pocket. In +another hour he was on the train, speeding to his home in the next +state. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +A HOSTAGE TO THE BOTTLE + +The speech of the day before of which Treadwell had spoken so +enthusiastically to Cameron Craig, had indeed given to the crowd, which +had been wont on past occasions to gather at the old court-house when +he spoke, another revelation of Harry Sevier. It had been +impromptu--not the outgrowth of deliberate plan. The non-appearance of +a much-heralded speaker had thrust the exigency upon him without +warning, and he had acquiesced only in a keen desire to save from blank +failure a meeting in whose principles and object he was by his very +character deeply interested. The tortuous involutions of local +politics had never interested him, but he had thrilled to the stirring +beneath the surface of the great forces of good and evil and the +present agitation for clean government had found him enrolled, without +question, on its side. + +As he stepped forward to face the great curtain of faces that stretched +outward and upward beyond the footlights, he had not known what he +should say. Indeed, while he slowly "felt" his audience in his opening +sentences, the sub-conscious part of his mind had been full of a matter +foreign to the subject at hand. There had come to him a fleeting +recollection of the last time he had spoken in public--the day upon +which he had betrayed his client and put a man, of whose innocence an +instinct deeper-rooted than reason had convinced him, into the striped +habiliments of the convict. The sharp, aching compunction of that +thought had never left him. Since that day, though he went daily to +his sumptuous office, he had taken no new case. He had gone always +with that sin clanking against his conscience and the memory of the +trial had focused always in that glimpse, across the mass of faces, of +a woman's look of puzzle and hurt. During the months since then that +face had hung before his fevered vision as a far, cool oasis to the +desert wayfarer. These had been black months of fierce, untiring +battle with the appetite to which he had surrendered himself, and which +he had sworn to conquer. There had been times when the avid thirst had +seized him by the throat, when endurance had almost failed: days when +he had sat in his inner office, with door locked and blinds down, +fighting desperately with the strenuous impulse that seemed to be +dragging him bodily, as if with fleshly hands, to the little +wall-cabinet whose door had never been unlocked since the day of that +sinister court-recess. + +During this prolonged, grappling struggle he had never been to +Midfields. He had seen Echo but occasionally, walking or driving on +the street, or less frequently at functions from which he could not +absent himself without remark. There had been no confidences between +them. Never had he leaned to her to whisper: "You see! Do I do well?" +Never had her lips said, "I know ... I know, and I am watching!" yet +his heart had told him that she was alive to the issue, that she felt +the forces conflicting for the mastery. She had not been in the +audience on this day, but as the faces pulsed and receded till they +wove into a grey blur in the misty blaze of the incandescents, Harry's +inner vision had a swift memory of her face as it had looked in that +old court-house scene. + +And with it, as though it had been a key to the disused mental +machinery, strangely and wonderfully there had come back to him, in a +sudden flashing illumination like summer lightning, a surging return of +the old power, the vivid rush of lambent images in his brain and the +burning, insistent phrase to his tongue--the power that he had thought +gone forever with that shuddering failure of a year before. + +As he felt again the old native ability rising in him, strong and +undismayed, and once more his own, without hostage given to the bottle, +a stinging delight had swept through him. It was the fruit of victory, +and fiercely sweet in proportion to the bitterness of the struggle. +Yet in his new sensitiveness the realisation had held a flicker of +self-shame. Never in those old days had he employed that talent for +the greater good: only for individual ambition, often for the blunt +defeating of the clear ends of justice! It was another Harry Sevier +who spoke now, one to whom conscience now stood as mentor, to whom +principle was become a guiding star. The leashed power and restraint +had been bred of that long struggle, and from the fresh mastery of self +which he had so hardly gained, flowed forth a subtle magnetic quality +that held his listeners mute. In the hush that wrapped the great +assemblage the speaker of the day, late by an hour, had entered the +back of the stage, to wave back the nonplussed chairman and to seat +himself in the rear, enthralled by the white magic that swayed all +alike. The speech had held no rodomontade, none of the pyrotechnics +that, had lent a flavour of sensation to past court trials. It had +been on a higher plane than appeal to superficial feeling or ingrained +prejudice. It had brought no accusation, pointed no finger, save +backward to old ideals of community respect, and forward to the wave of +independent thought that was sweeping over sister states to break in +thundering force upon the crags of misrule. + +It had closed in a note of hope and of promise, and ended with the hall +hushed in that greatest tribute to true oratory--absolute silence. + +Next day, wherever men congregated in the little capital, Harry +Sevier's name was on every lip. It was flung wide, too, in newspaper +headlines until the ripple stirred far borders. Of this he himself +could not be unaware. He knew that never in the old days had he spoken +as he had spoken then. He was conscious also that in the trial of +himself his faculties had been reorganised and renewed, had emerged +sounder and truer from the strenuous testing, and that the fire through +which he had passed had burned away the rubble and left metal that was +more worthy. Nor could he fail to realise that at a single step he had +attained to a new and unfamiliar status in the community. He felt this +not so much in the multiple congratulations of the many, as in a +certain new deference that he distinguished in more reserved greetings. + +Beneath all, however, but one opinion profoundly concerned him--Echo's. +As he swung along the street this afternoon, the thought of her +excluded all others. + +Rounding the corner, a voice came to him--a ribald, good-humoured +voice, inviting some one to "come and have a drink." He turned +abruptly. Chisholm Allen stood a little way from him, before a +swing-door through which sifted the clink of glasses and boisterous +conversation. + +Chilly was decidedly the worse for wear. Much water had run under the +bridges since he had tussled with old Nelson, the butler, over the +decanter of sherry. His face was pallid and the marks of incorrigible +weakness and self-indulgence showed clearly through its habitual +good-nature. Chilly's feet were set in the paths of dalliance and he +had ceased to care if anybody knew it. He greeted the newcomer, +however, with a trace of embarrassment which he dissipated with a +laugh, as he said: + +"The invitation's for you, if you like, Harry. We'll have one to the +silver-tongued orator! What do you say?" + +For answer Harry linked an arm in his and turned him down the +street--away from the swing-door. "Come up to my rooms, Chilly, it's +cool there and we haven't had a talk for a blue moon. No, we'll +consider the drink afterward." + +Just at the moment a carriage and pair bowled by them. It was drawn by +the Allens' bays and Echo was on the rear seat. She had seen the +action, had caught its import, and Harry had a flashing glance from her +dark eyes that sent the blood coursing to his fingers. Chilly too, +however, had seen the swift exchange. He frowned, then laughed again. + +"You should join the Salvation Army," he said, satirically. "They've a +rescue corps, I believe. I know a pretty ensign, and she shall come +and pin a nice little medal on your manly chest!" + +Harry smiled without resentment. "The Army might not be so bad; it's +an outdoor life at any rate. You'd be better for more of that." + +"I believe you," said Chilly lugubriously. "It's getting impossible +indoors. Nothing doing but moral lectures nowadays. If it weren't for +the Duchess I'd cut it." + +"For 'somewhere east of Suez, where a man can raise a thirst'?" quoted +the other mildly. "Travel is expensive, Chilly." + +"Yes, confound it," was the reply. "So is the thirst. The old man +only allows me fifty dollars a month and I've stuck up every bar in +town to the limit." + +A frown was on Harry's brow. A year ago this youth had confined his +daily potations to the club, and his drinking-bouts to that sequestered +resort, "The Springs." Now he drank openly in corner saloons--he, the +son of a southern gentleman, a member of the Supreme Bench, whose +forebears had been courtly and clean-living from the days of the +Colony! They had turned into the apartment-building now, and a moment +later were in Harry's sitting-room, whose windows opened upon a square +musical with lisping leaves and the cool splash of a fountain. + +It was an apartment that bespoke a keen though sober artistic taste: +grey walls with violet silk curtains at the deep windows and two or +three old paintings--among these, set on an easel, a Greuze that he had +unearthed in a cobwebbed curio-shop in Italy--a plain desk with a strip +of dull-coloured damask whose quaint Russian needle-work set off a few +books in tooled leather--a square piano of Circassian walnut spread +with an old brocade, against which a bowl of peonies splashed their +fleshy crimson--and deep, comfortable chairs. Into one of these Chilly +threw himself. + +"Well," he said, "here we are, as per schedule. So trot out your +drink." + +"It was that I wanted to talk to you about. I think you know I'm your +friend, Chilly, and what I say I say as a friend. Whisky is getting +the better of you." + +"Pshaw!" scoffed Chilly, easily. "You weren't always so mighty +particular. When did you climb onto the water-wagon, I'd like to know?" + +"When I found I was better off there. I haven't touched liquor for a +year. Take my advice, Chilly--it's sound!--and try to cut the drink +out. It's doing you harm." + +Chilly laughed. "That seems to be the signal all along the line!" he +said humorously. "But what's the good? I could knock off any time I +chose, just as well as you. But I don't intend to do it yet awhile. I +like it." + +There was a tentative knock at the door. It opened and a girl's +piquant face peered in. "Chisholm Allen!" said Nancy Langham's +indignant voice. "Have you forgotten you have an engagement to take me +to the kennels this afternoon?" + +Chilly sprang forward and seized her small gloved hands. "Come in," he +said. "There's nobody here but Harry and me. Please do, Nancy." + +"Oh, I mustn't!" She turned to the latter. "You see I needed Chilly +so _tremendously_, and Echo told me she saw him with you. I expected +to meet him on the way. Then I thought I'd just ring and ask for him, +only the hall door was open. Chilly, you're outrageously undependable. +You know I wanted to get that dog to-day, because I'm going to leave +for home to-morrow, and you do know more about dogs than any one else." + +Chilly looked a little shame-faced. "I forgot all about it, Nancy. +Honestly, I did." + +She sighed. "That's the fact, no doubt, but it's not one bit +complimentary. You're so dreadfully truthful, Chilly! Come along now, +or we'll be too late." + +"All right," he answered, drawing her inside the door. "Just a minute. +Harry's going to give me a drink. Weren't you, Harry, eh?" + +For answer the other pressed a button and a trim silk-robed Japanese +came noiselessly from the next room. "Fetch a bottle of Evien, +Suzuki," he said, "and some glasses. Have it cold, please." + +Chilly stared. "Mineral water!" he exclaimed with sulky discomfiture. +"My word! This is no signal for the H2O. I'm _dry_!" + +Harry shook his head. "I'm sorry, but it's a rule of my house." + +Chilly shrugged. For an instant a little sneer drew down his lips, +irritation fighting with his seldom-failing good-humour. He turned to +the square piano, sat down on its stool, and ran his fingers up and +down the ivory keys. + +"I'll return good for evil," he said. "Before we go I'll give you a +little ballad I've just composed. It's bound to make a great hit when +it strikes the Barbary Coast. He struck a resounding chord, and with a +wink at Harry, began to sing: + + "The rounder swore at his barroom score + 'Ere he called for a last, long bottle, + And proceeded to tint, without any stint, + His nose with a mellow mottle. + Then he climbed on a chair and hiccoughed long + And loudly he sang this funny old song: + + "'Money is dross, + Loving is loss, + There's never a crown that is worth its cross! + Life is a toss, + Dying is moss, + But booze--Oh, bully old booze, is boss!'" + + +There was something of whimsical fun, yet of bitter recklessness in the +spectacle. Without technical training, Chilly had music in his +finger-tips and a fair baritone voice. The fingers wavered now and +then and the voice was shaken a little, but it was full of magnetism, +as, swaying lightly on the stool, he rolled out the slangy doggerel +with all the unction of a music-hall artist: + + "Then the mixer laughed till the cat went daft + And the roof clanged all its gutters, + While the loungers yelled with mirth unquelled + Till they shook the very shutters; + And a sweet-faced devil peeped over the steins + And merrily carolled the lilting lines: + + "'Money is dross, + Loving is loss, + There's never a crown that is worth its cross. + Life is a toss, + Dying is moss, + But booze--Oh, bully old booze, is boss!" + + +Harry's nerves were on edge. It was not the cheap vulgarity of the +jingle nor the patent swagger of the performer, but the +under-suggestion of the picture. The edge of this qualm had touched +him on the street, with the odour of Chilly's breath and the moist tang +of hops that had floated through the swinging-door. Now he felt a +sudden anger that the coarse picturing and the tinkling keys had power +to call up, even for an instant, the old slinking, craving ache in his +throat. + +Chilly swung round and got up laughing. "Pretty good, eh, what?" he +said. "Come along, Nancy; we'll go and pick out that dog! So long, +Harry." + +Harry opened the door for them. He did not trust himself to speak. As +Nancy's hand lay an instant in his on the threshold, a wave of sudden +pity engulfed him. Her cheeks were mist-pale and her girlish lips were +trembling. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +THE HEART OF A MAN + +An hour later Harry sat in the same pleasant room, looking out where +curdled clouds set their silver sails in the pale shimmer of sky. A +light breeze fluttered the figured-silk curtains, a blue-bottle buzzed +tentatively to and fro outside, and birds were fluting in the trees of +the small park and splashing joyously in the fountain. + +The encounter with Chilly had broken into his mood, which had been +occupied with more inviting things. Now, alone, the thought of what +this day held for him absorbed him. "One year!" he had said to himself +on the day of that old court-house trial. "That is the test I will +give myself. It is enough. If I can beat the brandy for a year, I can +beat it forever!" To-day was an anniversary; this afternoon the year +was up. The period had called up all his courage, had searched out +with prying fingers every crevice of weakness, explored insistently +each avenue of uncontrol. But he had won the long battle, and the +resurgence of the old power that had come to him in his yesterday's +speech had crowned the victory with confidence. Yesterday he would +have died sooner than to have wrung from his lips what he should say to +her--to Echo--to-day! + +When the tall old clock in the corner next chimed he rose and called, +"Suzuki!" + +The Japanese servant of spotless raiment entered with noiseless +footsteps. + +"Tell Aunt Judy I sha'n't want dinner to-night," said Sevier; "I'll +dine at the club. You can take the night off, if you like; I'll let +myself in." + +"_Hai-e!_" Suzuki sucked in his breath and his oval eyes allowed +themselves a gleam of satisfaction. As he brought his master's hat and +stick Harry looked at him meditatively, wondering, as he had wondered a +thousand times, what lay behind that secret-keeping, brown face with +its perpetual, half-smiling gravity. He had picked him up a half-dozen +years before in his travels, a shabby and abject adventurer with an +English dialect that was fearfully and wonderfully made; and the +youthful flotsam had speedily and without apparent tuition blossomed +forth into that inestimable jewel, a perfect valet. With Aunt Judy the +cook, who had been a servant of his father's, Bob the chauffeur who was +her son, and Suzuki, Harry's bachelor _ménage_ in the city stood a +model of its kind, and the despair of his associates. + +Harry walked slowly along the street clanging with cars, on pavements +busy and sunny at first and giving place gradually to wedges of lawn +and stretches of deserted foliaged flagging as he approached the +suburbs. At the big gate of Midfields he lifted his eyes. Mrs. Allen +was just stepping from her electric at the curb, cool and statuesque +and smiling. + +"A penny for your thoughts!" she said. "I really believe you were +counting the flag-stones. I hope you were coming in--you've been +shamefully oblivious of our pleasure this season!" + +"I've been oblivious of my own," he countered, opening the gate for +her. "But I'm going to make amends in future." + +They walked leisurely up the drive under the acacias, chatting. She +had often wondered, in the old days, whether there were not some +understanding between him and Echo, and his long absence had puzzled +her. But he had apparently gone nowhere else, and she welcomed his +return. He was a distinctly eligible _parti_, and Echo had reached a +point where the future was a pertinent thing. There had never been +between the mother and daughter that close _rapport_ which existed +between daughter and father; Mrs. Allen had never felt that she +understood Echo. She had never known for her, even as a child, the +fierce and excluding yearning which she had lavished on Chisholm, and +which had grown even stronger with the latter's increasing years and +delinquencies. But she had Echo's interests thoroughly at heart, and +Harry Sevier--particularly since his speech at the Opera House--had +attained to importance in her worldly estimation. + +"I haven't congratulated you," she said presently. "Your speech! It +was a masterly thing." + +"You were there? I'm glad I didn't know it. It would have deepened +the blueness of my funk." + +"Flatterer!" She tapped him on the arm with her parasol. "But I'm not +wholly pleased, I assure you. The headlines are prophetic, I'm afraid. +Presently the politicians will seize upon you, and the first we know +you will be in Congress--or the Senate--and the town will have lost +you. That's the way it goes!" + +"Ah," he said, shaking his head, "who is the flatterer now?" + +They had reached the big porch and she drew him into the hall and to +the blue parlour, where the Judge sat with Echo, leisurely munching +toast. "I've brought Mr. Sevier," she announced, "with his laurels +thick upon him, just in time for tea. For my part, I am a wreck from +the sun and I shall take mine in my room. But you'll come soon again, +won't you?" + +She passed out, faintly smiling and leaving a perfume of heliotrope +behind her, without waiting Harry's answer, which seemed indeed to be +given to Echo, since his hand held hers at the moment and his eyes were +on her face. The sight for him had blotted everything else. The +restful room with its cool shadows, the Judge--all seemed to retire +into an inextinguishable and meaningless background, leaving only them +two, together. In the year past he had never been so near her; now he +marked that while her hair had the same familiar whorl and golden +under-lights, her face seemed more serious than of old, her eyes deeper +and more wistful. + +Since that far-away evening at the Country Club, Echo had passed +through a confusion of experiences, the more trying as they had been +locked in her own breast. It had been more than Harry Sevier: it was +her love for him that had been fought over during that long year. When +he had left her that night with his kiss burning on her hand, she had +known instinctively that he had gone to do battle. What she had said +had stung him deeply, yet she could not have recalled a word. It had +been the cry of wounded pride, of stricken ideals, of reproach, of +protest against the dominancy of the thing she hated over the man she +loved. As the long months of autumn and winter wore away she had +seemed, with a singular clarity of vision, to see his temptation and to +enter spiritually into his struggle. They had met only a few times and +then in public places and more than once her eye had distinguished the +traces of the conflict. Something deep in her had told her that when +he came to her again that conflict would be ended. So, at sight of him +on the threshold, Echo's heart had leaped into turbulent beating. +Here, at last, they were face to face--it was the closure of the past, +the burgeoning of the new! + +There was a desultory conversation over the tea, and then the Judge +went back to his chair in the library, and they two strayed out through +the open French-window to the wide porch. There, on the top step, she +sat down, leaning back against one of the big columns, up which a +crimson rambler climbed. He sat lower, at her feet. The smile had +faded from both their faces, and a rose that was on her breast, from +the tumult of her heart, showered its petals on the stone. He could +see the old sun-dial gleaming from its tangle of ivy. He knew its +quaint motto: + + _Hours fly, flowers die. + New men, new ways, + Pass by; + Love stays._ + +After a silence he lifted his gaze. + +"You didn't think," he said in a low voice, "that I stayed away because +I--because that same thing had ever happened since the day of the +trial?" + +"No," she answered, gently, "I knew it hadn't." + +A uniformed imp on a bicycle--a postal messenger--careened wildly up +the drive with a special delivery letter. They saw him deliver it to +old Nelson at the side portico and pedal whistling down a by-path. + +"Then," he said quickly, "you know now that it never can again? It has +been a year, a round year to-day. I made up my mind that I would not +come to you till the last day was out." + +"I felt that, too," she said. "I knew what you were thinking. I--I +even guessed the year. Was it--so hard?" + +"Yes," he answered. "But it would have been harder if I hadn't found +it out when I did. The sting of all these months," he went on, "has +been your thought of me! Every day, every hour, I have seen you as you +looked that night at the 'Farm.' I shall never deserve that look +again--Echo!" + +She turned toward him at that, as if with a sudden impulse, her eyes +like sapphire stars, her lips parted, but she did not speak. The +failing sunlight spattered down through the moving foliage in +green-gilt flashes that tinged her face and touched her hair with the +soft burnish of Venetian gold, like that of a figure he remembered in +St. Mark's. Behind her reared the seamed and grey old column--a faded +background of age for a figure of immortal youth--and he knew suddenly +that the picture of her, as he saw her at that moment, had covered +forever the painful memory. There was only the ardent, unconditional +now: only Echo and the dear old porch and the dimming daylight--and a +bluebird singing from the heart of a tree--ever henceforward to be +symbols to him of woman's love and--home! + +He leaned toward her, his hand groping for hers, outstretched on the +cool stone beside her, and said in a voice shaken, in spite of himself: + +"Echo--it _is_ just as it was a year ago, isn't it?" + +She caught her hand--the one he groped for--to her cheek. She rose, +and for an instant it seemed as if she had not heard. Then her glance +wavered and fell and a bright, rich colour stained her cheeks like a +sudden flush of rosy sun-set. But she had slightly turned away and he +did not see it. + +"Ah!" he said, looking up at her. "I may say it now--may I not?--what +you must have known all along. I love you, I love you! Only you and +your love, dear--that is all I ask of God!... Echo--" + +There was a sudden sound behind them, a hoarse cry from the room they +had left. Both turned sharply toward the French-window. Then she was +down the long porch like a flying shadow. + +He followed, to find her bending over the form of her father, slipped +sideways on the leathern sofa, his face bluish-white and a paper +crumpled in his rigid hand. At the same moment Nelson thrust his +woolly head through the rear door. + +"Quick!" she cried, kneeling beside the couch. "He has fainted. Call +mother." He went, his aged features twitching with fright. + +"I will send Doctor Southall," said Harry quickly. He touched her +hand, and with a single backward look at her, hurried out. She heard +his step speeding down the gravel drive. + +Echo laid a tremulous hand upon her father's, and at the touch the +tense fingers relaxed and a crumpled brown paper dropped from them. +She snatched it up--was that what had made him faint? She spread it +out: it was a photographic print, unmounted, of the last page of a +letter, in his own handwriting. Across the top was printed, in the +purple, noncommittal lettering of a typewriter, "For possible release +May 3rd." + +Then as she gazed, over the agitation of her face grew a shocked +bewilderment that rushed headlong to realisation. She started to her +feet, and a vivid scarlet flooded her pale face from chin to brow, then +slowly ebbed, leaving behind it a frozen anguish. The print fell from +her hand. At the same moment the Judge stirred and opened his eyes. +He saw her standing before him; knowledge slipped back. + +"Echo--" + +She turned swiftly. He had struggled to a sitting posture--his gaze +fastened on the crumpled paper on the rug. A little spasm crossed his +face. "Reach me that," he said. + +She picked it up and laid it in his hand, and he put it into his pocket +with shaking fingers. He passed his hand across his forehead. +"Where's Sevier?" he asked dully. + +"He went to send the doctor. We were on the porch and heard you cry +out." + +"Ah, yes, I--remember. I tried to call you. I lost track of things +for a minute or two, I reckon, But it's nothing. I've had little +spells like this before. I don't need Southall--send Nelson to tell +him not to come. I'm all right." + +Unheeding her protests, he rose and went to his chair, as Mrs. Allen, +with unaccustomed agitation on her face, swept into the room. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +THE HANDWRITING ON THE WALL + +Late that night the Judge sat alone at his desk in the library. There +was a faint pungent odour in the room and at his elbow sat an ash-tray +on which was a little huddle of brown ashes--all that remained of the +photograph whose arrival that afternoon had so disconcerted him. He +sat like a stone image, staring out into the moon-lighted garden, but +really seeing nothing beyond the range of the poisonous ashes at his +side, save a green-and-yellow blur that might have been blent of leaves +and moonshine. + +He was looking at the Handwriting on the Wall. + +All of his early life had been impeccable, all save that single +lapse--that "brain-storm" which had convulsed the deep and quiet waters +of his nature. It had come and gone with fateful swiftness, and out of +the bitterness of the tragic awakening had grown gradually--as a +spotless lily springs from the silt--a flower of recompense, which, its +roots in the turbid memory, had shed a subtle perfume on his later +life. His steady-going career had been laurelled with place and +honours, and in Echo he had found compensation for the empty and the +missed. And now, after all the years, Fate grinned at him like a +gargoyle from the cloud, holding the thunderbolt to destroy him! +Unless he paid the penalty--with his professional integrity! + +The Judge knew all at once that in the Great Economy no act of life was +lost. His had not been. It had only been covered. Somewhere that old +leaf of scribbled paper had lain, inert but potential, waiting the turn +of the wheel to bring it to light. By some satanic twist of +circumstance it had come to the hands of his enemy--Craig was his enemy +now--and in his hands it spelled his own ruin. What weapon was there +to fight with? None. However dastard the act that spread it to the +world, he would stand in the eyes of his fellow-men discredited, +undermined, morally disestablished, stripped and naked of all those +things which were the breath of his life. He thought of his wife--of +Echo. For them humiliation, looks askance. His decision on the +Welles-Scott case was ready, locked in his drawer--lacking only his +signature writ at the bottom--the most vital and far-reaching decision +of any he had rendered. On the first of May it was to be handed down. +He remembered the typewritten line on the photograph: "May 3rd!" On +that day he would be placarded in the public prints! + +A hackneyed text flashed through his mind: "Be sure thy sin will find +thee out." He had not sinned, as the world counted it, no. But +chasing the first, a second text etched itself as swiftly: "As a man +thinketh in his heart, so is he." + +The coils had woven inextricably, there was no gap in the meshes. +Suppose he did this thing that Craig demanded, rewrote the decision, +perjured himself. Right, by another judgment, would have its way in +the end. The act would save him from shame--would save others as well. +What did it matter? Would not such a solution be best for all +concerned? + +"Thou shalt not do evil that good may come!"--it was curious how the +banal, forgotten texts started up, like Jack-in-boxes, from some +boyhood covert of his brain! Not matter? Ah, how much it mattered! +Escape by that road was impossible for him. And there was but one +other road by which he could evade the issue. + +He unlocked a desk-drawer and pushed aside its litter of papers. A +small silver-mounted revolver lay there--pointing the one way out. He +picked it up, his fingers shrinking at the chill of the cool metal, +then laid it on the desk. He took a sheet of paper from its place and +began to write: "Dear Echo--" + +He started; no, that would not do. He began again: "Dear Charlotte +and--" + +He paused an instant and listened--his hearing had caught some sound +above-stairs. It was not repeated and he bent his head again over the +writing. But his fingers would not frame the words. He laid aside the +pen. Better, after all, to go all silently, leaving behind him empty +speculation, which if painful at first, would become in time but a +softened memory! + +It was the opening of the door of Echo's room which he had heard. For +hours she had lain sleepless, her brain throbbing, strange painful +pictures flitting under her closed eyelids. Her home world, which had +always seemed simple and uncomplex, even in its darker aspects, had +suddenly become fateful and mysterious, a thing of secret depths and +shaming, piteous revelations. Her own father's past had held a secret +that would not bear the light! That he had loved another woman than +her mother--afterward--that, though the thought was repellent, perhaps +he could not have helped. But that he had ever, ever as a passing +phase, yielded to an infatuation which had taken no thought of +consequence or of convention smote her with a kind of terror. Now, +through his own reckless act, he had become the prey of a shameless +woman--of a blackmailer. + +For that was what it seemed to her. It did not occur to her that his +letter might have fallen into other hands. In her imagination, back of +the situation stood the woman who had tempted him, almost to his +complete undoing, in his youth, now--a very wanton!--holding out the +badge of his indiscretion, for a price! The photograph had come to him +with its blunt threat typed at the top: "For Possible Release May 3rd." +Echo had seen the like many a time written upon her father's +printer's-proofs. It meant released for publication. His letter was +to be spread broadcast--unless he met the demand! The hideous +vulgarity of his predicament sent pulsing waves of shame and +humiliation over her. It seemed suddenly that their conventional, +well-ordered existence had dropped all at once into an unnatural and +hateful environment, the murky, unredeemable atmosphere of the +yellow-backed novel and the tawdry film-play. Thoughts such as these +had fought with the acute sympathy that had all her life made her and +her father in feeling wellnigh inseparable, stabbing her love with the +reflection that his deepest heart had, after all, been locked from her. + +Gradually, however, the sharper corrosive ache had dulled away, leaving +an overmastering sense of his trouble. Since Nelson had helped him to +his room after his fainting in the library, she had not seen him, for +though he had with curious stubbornness, it had seemed to her, refused +to have the doctor come, he had not appeared at dinner. She wondered +whether he was now asleep, or lying wide-eyed, nursing thoughts like +hers. Finally there had stolen over her an odd uneasiness, a thriving +anxiety. That tenuous telegraphy whose laws evade analysis though its +operations are familiar and which, ever since her childhood, had called +from her a subconscious and involuntary response to his moods that had +sometimes startled them both by its eerie suggestion, now flooded her +mind with a sense of warning. She slipped out of bed to peer through +the blind. She could see a window of the library: light was sifting +from between its heavy curtains--her father was not in his room, then; +he was there. She thrust her feet into worsted slippers, threw a +kimono over her nightgown and ran quickly down the stair. + +The light footfall, the whispering rustle, did not reach the Judge. He +was unaware of the girl who had paused uncertainly on the threshold. +His mind was arguing the final phase of his problem. + +What he purposed would cut the Gordian knot, make plain-sailing for +others, if not for himself. He would have rendered no decision on the +crucial case. With his escape the problem would solve itself. Craig +would have nothing to gain then in publishing the letter. "Why not?" +he muttered. "It is justifiable--it is neither gross nor cowardly--to +issue one's-self a ticket into the hereafter in order to avert shame +from the innocent and secure peace to those one loves!" His wife was +provided for. His elimination from her equation of life, he reflected +with a tinge of bitterness, would not deeply disturb her even, centred +existence. Echo, he thought likely, would marry Sevier. And +Chilly--of what earthly use was his life to Chilly? "I will do it," he +said to himself. He stretched out his hand--toward the silver-mounted +revolver. + +But he drew it back. A further clearer conception had come to him in +that last instant to give him pause. What, after all, was he about to +do? Himself aside, all that was dearest to him aside, was not the act +he contemplated at bottom the murder of a principle, the betrayal of a +trust that he held for the State? He was a public officer, who had +taken oath in the presence of his associates worthily to execute the +functions of his high office, to do justice and fear not. For him the +sin of omission could be no less than the sin of commission. Would +such a shifty suppression of his decision be one whit less a treason +than the rendering of a mendacious one? Either equally besmirched his +honour! Something deeper in him than dread of death, deeper even than +his present fear of life, stirred and throbbed. No, whatever the +outcome, no matter what it held for him and his, he must go through +with it to the bitter end! He buried his face in his hands. + +As he sat thus stirless, the sense came to him of another presence in +the room. Another's breath seemed to enwrap the place with feeling. +He turned his head and saw the figure in the doorway. "Echo!" he cried +and rose to his feet. + +[Illustration: He turned his head and saw the figure in the doorway. +"Echo!" he cried, and rose to his feet] + +She came to him quickly, a little diffidently. "I couldn't help it, +dear! I felt you--worrying, and I had to come." Suddenly her eyes +fell on the revolver on the desk. She sprang and snatched at it in +panic. "That! Oh, not that! Not that!" + +"I--it was in my drawer," he said. "Surely you--" + +"Ah," she cried. "I know! You--you received a letter this afternoon. +It made you faint. You haven't been yourself since you read it. And +now you--" + +He drew a shaking hand across his eyes. "No, dear," he said more +steadily. "It would not have been--what you think. There was a moment +when--but it has gone, and forever." He took the revolver from her +hand, returned it to the drawer and locked it. "There," he said, "I +give you the key. It will not happen now." There was in his wailing +speech a kind of hopeless acquiescence and finality. + +Her heart was beating hard with a painful embarrassment. "Can +you--can't you tell me what the letter was?" + +He looked at her palely, his features working. She would have to know +soon enough, yet he shrank with a fastidious pain from telling her. +What would she think of him? "Twenty years ago," he said, "when I was +a young man, I wrote an--an unwise letter. It--it had to do with some +one who died the year it was written, but whose memory I--I treasure. +The threat is made now to publish it, and this would--would shame and +harm that memory and me." + +"Some one who is dead?" she repeated bewildered. The picture her fancy +had painted was fading out. "Then how--" + +"The old letter has fallen into unfriendly hands." + +"And it must come back to hurt you--to spoil your life now! Something +written before I was born! It sha'n't! It sha'n't!" She spoke with +passionate abandon, her words struck out like fire from flint, from the +horror of the knowledge that had sprung to her at sight of the gleaming +thing at which she had snatched. "But you can pay the price, no matter +how much it is! Take my pearls--my rings--my gowns." + +He shook his head. "It's not money: what I am asked to pay is my +honour. I am required to alter my judicial decision on the +Welles-Scott case ... to hand down a legal lie." + +She looked at him with parted lips. "The Welles-Scott case!" + +"Yes. Much hangs on this decision. The great corporate interests--but +you would not understand." + +She threw herself beside his chair and knelt close to him. A great +compassion was welling up in her, mingling itself with deep anger at +the cowardly attack upon him. She had known of such conscienceless +warfare in political life--acts of "character assassins" which knew +neither pity nor honourable scruple. "Who has the letter?" she asked. + +"Cameron Craig. It came with his card." + +She started violently. Cameron Craig! He who had once asked her to +marry him, who had asserted his love for her--he, now bent on her +father's ruin! She had a darting memory of that heavy, ruthless jaw, +those lowering, determined eyes. Cameron Craig? She lifted a stricken +face. + +"You see!" he said. "I remember you once said to me that he was not +'one of us.' He isn't. That is why I know that he will stop at +nothing. He will do what he threatens. There is no way out." + +She rose to her feet. Her heart was beating so that her breath came +with difficulty and a mist was before her eyes. "You will hand down +the decision." It was a statement, not a question. + +"God help me--I must!" + +"When?" + +"A week from to-day, as I have announced." + +She leaned and put her arm about his neck, the key of the drawer still +clenched in her cold hand, and kissed him on the forehead. Even in +that numb moment she felt a certain pride that he, who had known a +passing weakness, was yet, in this crucial moment, so strong. + +"You must go back to bed now," he said, heavily. "You are going to +your aunt's to-morrow, aren't you?" + +She nodded, her cheek still against his. "I shall take the early +train, before you are up. But I shall be back next day." + +She withdrew her arms. "Good night," she half-whispered, then looked +at the locked drawer. "You will not--you will not--" + +"I promise," he said. + +"Whatever happens?" + +"Whatever happens." + +An instant later she was gone. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +THE ONLY WAY + +As Echo stood once more in the dim light of her blue-and-white room, it +seemed to her to belong to some blithe past life which she had lived +long ago and discarded--as if she were suddenly an intruder into the +peace and quiet it enfolded. For though her hands were like ice, her +veins were beating hot and her mind was filled with the heat of a fiery +furnace. + +Cameron Craig held her father's name, his career, his whole happiness, +and that of them all--her mother, Chilly, herself--in his hand. His +was the power to crush and to ban. This man had professed to love her. +She remembered what he had said to her that day in the garden--a year +ago: "Since I met you the whole world has been changing for me.... You +have entered into my blood and my brain, and the want of you has +coloured all I have thought and done ... Echo, Echo!" The words seemed +to wreathe about her, to return to her in pelted reverberations from +the wall. She could save the situation. She could marry Cameron Craig. + +The weird thought had rushed through her like a cold flame with the +voicing of that name in the library. He would do it. More than the +decision, more than any material ambition, he desired her. The +letter--and the photographic plate--should be the price! + +As she fought with herself through the long night hours, distraught yet +tearless, it came to her with agonised reiteration that the resolve +marked the end for her of all that makes life young. Up to a year ago +she had been a girl; her deeper emotions had been unstirred, her soul +unknown to herself. Only from the moment at the "Farm" when she had +sent Harry Sevier from her to his battle with appetite, had she known +the real meaning of life. Since then she had had the sweetness of +learning love's unfolding in denial, and that very day it had come to +fruition. Could it have been only that afternoon that the confession +had trembled on his lips, when her heart had seemed to beat audibly, +like little songs of joy? Now the cup was dashed from her lips. And +he would never know--she could never tell him! That was the deep and +piteous treason to which she must contribute! + +She crept to the window and looked out over the garden, its elfish +vapours dimly lighted by a thin, silver crescent-moon that seemed +hanging like a gipsy ear-ring from a swarthy cloud. Below her the +box-bordered paths showed in a sunken cross. The hemlock in its +centre, with its triple spires, had been brought, a tiny seedling, by +her great-great-grandmother from White Sulphur Springs, rooted in a +gourd tied on the back of an old buff-coloured coach. The old lady's +quaint portrait hung still in the dining-room, just above the +diamond-leaded cabinet that held the tea-set of gold and lapiz lazuli +blue, from which Jefferson and Randolph had drunk, and her garlanded +silver basket whose inscription read, "From a lover of fifty years to +his bride." + +Echo felt a little shiver in her heart, as painful contrasting pictures +thronged before her disordered fancy--pictures of herself as Craig's +wife. She saw herself, young in years but with sere joys and blasted +ideals, all youth's impulses dead in her, the wife of a man whose +bodily presence she loathed and whose character, even before this, she +had detested. A chill passed through her, and she dropped the curtain +and shut out the moonlight. But what if her father stood ruined, the +mark of public pity and covert sneers? She thought of the +pearl-handled revolver. He would have given his life to checkmate +fate, if that had but been possible to him. And she was his daughter! + +But to give _herself_, her body, her soul! To go to this man, to live +with him, to bear his name--she shrank from the thought as at the touch +of white-hot iron. + + +When the tiny ormolu clock on her dressing-table struck five she drew +up the blind. Dawn, with its coral sandals, was tiptoeing over the +garden, hanging dew-diamonds on the rose-bushes, swinging her censer of +multifold perfume to the waking flute of the birds. She bathed her +face and smoothed her hair, then put on a dark travelling dress and +packed a small bag, putting into it only linen and a few +toilet-accessories, with a closed silver frame, heart-shaped, whose +twin sides held miniatures of her father and mother. Last she unlocked +a tin box in her drawer, took some money which it contained and put it +in her pocket. Then, bag in hand, she went downstairs. + +In the dining-room Nelson held up his hands, pink-lined palms outward. + +"Mah Goodness, honey!" he ejaculated. "Reck'n yo' didn' sleep 'tall +las' night, what wid Marse Beve'ly took so yistidy. Yo' look jes' lak +er ghos'. Now yo' set down en drink some hot coffee en eat plenty +chick'n en waffles. Ain' gwine find nuthin' _half_ ez good on dat ar' +dinin'-cyah, nohow!" + +The warmth of the coffee was grateful to her, and while the old man +hovered about her she made a pretence of eating, answering his +protestations with monosyllables, in fact scarcely knowing what she +said, for her mind was busy with other things. 'Lige, the driver, +would wait to put her on the train--she must take the up-train then, as +he expected her to do. And it was an express: she could not leave it +till it reached the junction, hours later. There, however, she could +take the other road--the Southern. There must be an afternoon train, +and that, though by a round-about way, would bring her finally to her +destination. + +When carriage-wheels sounded from the drive she went into the library +and seated at her father's desk, wrote a note. It was to Harry Sevier. +She sealed and addressed it with a hand that shook a little, and gave +it to Nelson with instructions to send it during the morning. The old +negro put her into the carriage, with her bag and tucked the cover +about her with loving hands. + +She caught a breath, uneven like a child's. "You'll--take good care of +father, Nelson?" + +"Bress yo' li'l ha'at, ah'm sho' gwine watch Marse Beve'ly lak er +_hawk_. He'll be all right, en yo' be back termorrer." + +"Yes," she said faintly. + +As the carriage whirled into the roadway, she turned her head to cast a +straining gaze up the silent drive to the old house. Then the acacias +shut it from her view. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +DERELICT + +In Harry Sevier's outer office his clerk glanced backward with a +startled expression, his law-book dropping from his fingers. "That's +queer," he muttered. "I never heard him laugh like that before. +Doesn't sound like a joke, somehow." + +He rose and tapped lightly on the inner door, which he had closed upon +his employer a moment before. But there was no response and he went +back to his seat--and the volume he was studying. "Wonder if it was +that note I gave him," he speculated. + +The tap had fallen on deaf ears. Harry was sitting in the other room, +rigidly staring at the note in question. There was on him a feeling of +actual physical sickness. He did not know that he had laughed. At +last he rose, and crumpling the written sheet into a ball, laid it in +the fire-place and struck a match. His fingers worked clumsily and he +broke several short off before a flame showed and he stooped painfully +and held the match to its edge. He remained in the crouching posture +while the paper blazed merrily up. In the charring heat it crackled +and opened, showing for a brief instant in the baleful, blackening, +light two sentences it had contained: "_Think as gently of me as you +can. I can never marry you--never._" + +He stood up dazedly and groped his way to a chair. So this was the +end! She, Echo, whom he had thought so true, she had been playing with +him--and now the game was over. To her he had been only a puppet, a +card in hand to be played off, discarded for the winning of the greater +point. Poor, brainless, fool that he was! There was no longer a +yesterday--no dear eyes holding his, no Eden wind blowing the +rose-petals nor silver stars swinging the incense of the gods! He had +been living in a fairy-tale, a castle in Spain, a fool's paradise, +hugging a ridiculous dream, that had had no reality to her, had been +but a chapter of coquetry, to which she now wrote _finis_! "Think +gently!" This was the epitaph of her flirtation with Harry +Sevier--flung away, raked under, thrust from sight, a thing for the +scare-crow and the scavenger! + +He got up and going slowly to the window, stood many minutes with his +forehead against the pane. + +What remained for him? To sweep out of his life the shards of that +beautiful thing that lay destroyed forever? To saunter on, with +hypocritical smirk and affected nonchalance, down the empty declivity +of professional habit, to an undesirable goal? To what end? Of what +value had been his striving? A year ago he might have won her--no one +else had had more than a slight hold upon her then. It had been that +long denial that he had set himself that had undone him! What profit +to him that he had won the mastery over himself, had cut the tentacle +coils that were enwinding him? Of what had been the use? + +There darted through his racked mind the sorry jingle that Chilly had +once roared in his rooms: + + "Money is dross, + Loving is loss, + There's never a crown that is worth its cross. + Life is a toss, + Dying is moss, + But booze--Oh, bully old booze, is boss!" + + +Why not "cut it all," as Chilly had longed to do? Plunge out along the +numb, reckless way whose well-remembered mile-stones suddenly beckoned +him--anyhow, anywhere, only to muffle the pain that plucked at him--to +sodden and sink himself in blessed oblivion, like a stone in a pool! + +A thing that had lain torpid and dormant in the dregs of his being +thrust up its head. It was as though a chain snapped in his brain, and +what had been shackled there reared, savage and exultant. On the desk +sat a photograph in a silver frame. Once he had been used to turn this +face-down when that cabinet was opened a year ago! He picked this up +and with a sudden wrench of his powerful fingers bent and broke it +across again and again, crushing metal and board into a shapeless +battered twist, and flung it into the fireplace. He snatched up a +heavy paper-weight and with one blow smashed in the door of the little +wall-cabinet. The glass fell in a shower of silvery tinkles to the +floor. He seized the black bottle that sat there--with the rusty +goblet--poured the latter to the brim and drank it off--once, twice, +three times. + +He went into the main office. Its occupant was on his feet in alarm at +the crash of shattered glass in the next room. "How much money is +there on the premises?" + +The clerk looked in a drawer. "About sixty dollars. It's the last +payment on--" + +"Give it to me," said Sevier shortly. He pocketed the wad of bills the +other handed him. "I'm going on a journey--abroad," he said. "I may +be gone some time--in fact, I know I shall. Don't forward anything, +and close up the office till I return. You will draw, as usual, of +course." In another moment he was giving directions--over the +complaisant wire--to his bank. He had always kept his leisure clear by +putting the small details of daily routine book-keeping, as he +expressed it "on the other fellow"; however long his desertion, rent +and camp-followers should be paid with regularity. + +Ten minutes later his valet, in a suit of spotless white linen, let him +into his apartment. + +"I'm off for a vacation, Suzuki," he said. "To-night, when Bob comes +for orders, tell him to put the car up till I want it. You can go to +night-school and rub up your 'Yingleesh.'" + +The Japanese blinked. "A'right," he said. "When we see you some more?" + +"When I get back." Sevier lifted a book from the table. "Take this to +Mr. Treadwell's--his house, not his office--you understand. There's no +message; it belongs to him. Don't wait; go at once." + +When he had closed the outer door on the valet, Harry drew a long +breath. He opened another door and listened. He could hear Aunt Judy +rattling crockery in the kitchen, humming as she laboured. He would be +undisturbed, the coast was clear. His veins were beating hot now with +the brandy, and the sickness was gone. In the old days the reaction +had been slow and grudging. But during the year his body had refreshed +itself. The inured crust of usage was stripped away, and the physical +side responded speedily. + +He went into his dressing-room and threw open the huge walnut wardrobe +that effaced one wall. It was hung from end to end with clothing. He +selected a cheap dun-coloured suit which he had purchased abroad years +before for a walking-tour, of whose strenuous occupations it showed +some traces in wear, a flannel shirt and a slouch hat, companion of +sundry long-ago fishing excursions. He took a nail-scissors and +painstakingly cut from each article its maker's name. In the +bath-room, first with shears and then with a razor, he cut off his +crisp dark beard: never, since his college days abroad, had he seen his +own face like that. + +Finally arrayed, he regarded himself in the cheval-glass. The Harry +Sevier of sumptuous apparel and perfect grooming, the familiar spirit +of the place, was gone. In his stead there stood an unfamiliar +presence, with smooth-shaven chin and knock-about clothing. And the +stranger looked from the depths of the mirror with a gaze from which +something tempered and remorseful had vanished, a gaze of avid +recklessness and strange, irresponsible daring, the look of one +standing on the sheer verge of any hazard, welcoming any throw of the +dice, fearing nothing and caring nothing. + +As he stood, his hand encountered a small hard object in his pocket. +He drew it out. It was a ring, roughly made and holding an uncut +emerald almost square in shape. He remembered that once, in the woods, +he had bought it for a whim from some gipsy caravan--a luck ring. Much +luck it had brought him! Well, it was the gipsy-road now for him. He +drew off his seal ring and thrust the other on his finger in its place. + +He went quickly out the front door and down to the entrance pulling his +hat brim well over his eyes on issuing to the street. As he did so he +grazed a lady leisurely passing. It was the plump and pretty Mrs. +Spottiswoode. Her glance met his fairly, but there was no sign of +recognition; she only drew her trim, modish skirt away from the contact +as she passed on. + +He walked more rapidly now. He could scarce keep from running--would +have done so but for the thronging crowds. The brandy he had drunk in +the office had roused the devil of craving; it was in his throat now +like the rasp of hot sand-paper and he craved more alcohol with a +desperate craving that would not be denied. At the edge of the open +square which held the railroad station he plunged into a saloon and +pushed through its groups of loungers to the bar. + +"A flask of whisky--the best you have," he said. + +The bar-tender wiped his hands on his duck jacket and took down a squat +bottle. "O. and S.," he said, affably. "Just blown in to town?" + +Harry stared him in the eye. "Wrap that thing up, and be quick about +it!" was his answer. + +The man in the duck jacket muttered something under his breath, banged +the package on the bar and rang up the payment on the cash-register +with an angry jingle. + +Harry thrust his purchase under his arm, went out, crossed the square +and climbed aboard a train that was drawing out. He went rapidly +forward to the smoker; there he--and the bottle he carried--would be +unnoticed. As he sat down in the rear seat, the conductor passed by. +Harry had no ticket. He handed him a bill. + +"Where to?" asked the other briefly. + +"How far do you go?" + +"Birmingham." + +"To Birmingham, then," said Harry. + +The afternoon wore on, station after station went by. The man in the +rear seat sat with his eyes straight before him, moveless except as +from time to time he lifted a bottle to his lips and drank thirstily, +avidly. The frenzied pain was gone now, leaving only a dull ache, and +gradually, very gradually, this too slipped away into the void. He was +now once more the man who had fled in his motor from the face of a +convict in a court-room, flying through the night in a jumbled dream, +strung upon a headlong speed through vacuity. + +Evening came, with the glamour of peach-blown valleys and honey-lipped +hills, lying under pale stars against the sunset. Night fell, with its +cooler breeze through the windows, its glimpses of quiet, watching +woods, of white mists wreathing across the meadows, of yellow lights. +But Harry took no heed. Only hours later, when the train rolled into a +great rotunda did he turn his head. He did not know where he was. He +did not even wonder. He rose, kicked the emptied bottle under the +seat, and left the train. + +He went out of the station. It sat on a ridge above a great river and +on the lower level he had a glimpse of a sordid purlieus of rambling +streets, red-paned windows and gleaming doorways, the soiled earmarks +of the city's slums. + +He crossed the street and plunged aimlessly down a narrow alley toward +the water-front. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +LIKE A THIEF IN THE NIGHT + +The potations in the smoking-car had had their first effect. Sevier +had passed from the jumbled dream now--was safe enisled in that strange +fourth-dimensional empire into which he had first wandered during that +wild night-ride in his motor, that region of tense consciousness that +was yet without rule, in which every sense was acute, his brain clear +as ice, but where impressions recorded themselves without +co-ordination. Eye and ear drank in avidly each sight and sound, and +he sniffed the thick smells as a hound sniffs a haunting but forgotten +trail. + +As he went further the dwindling signs of respectability vanished. He +was now below the city's "dead-line" where, in segregated wantonness, +vice and license unrolled their audacities fearless of the complaisant +police regulations. + +A hundred yards from the greasy docks lining the sluggish current from +which a plumy mist was lifting, a wide screened doorway showed a blaze +of electric-light upon a patch of saw-dust floor. Through it poured +the tinny blare of a gramophone hooting a comic song, mingled with +rumbling laughter and raised voices. It was a low-roofed, shambling +building, planned for the delectation of the barge-man and the +roustabout and now throbbing with their daily--and nightly--pleasures. +Harry halted before it. + +"Tough joint, eh?" The voice fell suddenly at his elbow. + +He turned. The speaker was red-cheeked and brisk, with dapper +sophistication and inquisitiveness written all over him. His shining +straw hat had a coloured band, there were white pearl buttons on his +patent-leather shoes and a natty stick swung lightly from his gloved +fingers. "I can see you don't belong with that crowd," he said, +nodding sagely toward the entrance. + +"No," said Sevier. He was staring at the speaker with a penetrating +intensity, thinking that, but for colouring and costume, they two +somewhat resembled each other--speculating as to the slanting scar on +the other's right cheek, that might have been the memento of a rusty +nail or of a pet panther--thinking of these things and of a thousand +things beside that were only remotely connected with either of them. + +"Neither do I, but I take a high dive into it now and then. Let's go +in and have a drink." + +In Harry's middle distance another more decorous swing-door vibrated to +and fro, with a sharp smell of hops, a rattle of glasses, a voice +reckless but good-humoured--proposing a like libation. Beyond this in +endless succession were openings and re-openings of a locked cabinet +that had hung somewhere on a wall, and further yet, myriads of goblets, +cut with shining prisms, reflecting rainbow colours on spotless napery. +A drink? + +"Why not?" he said, and striking open the door, led the way into the +noisy interior, reeking with stale odours, with strong tobacco-smoke, +with carouse and profanity. He strode across the floor, shouldering +his way unceremoniously through the press, and sat down at a small deal +table that was unoccupied. His companion seated himself opposite. He +was looking at Harry with critical admiration, noting his lithe +athletic build and the certain, confident swing of his movements. His +eye lighted. + +"Gad!" he said, with a little laugh. "To tell the truth I wouldn't +have cared to come in here alone, though I've been in a good many shady +boozeries. Allow me to introduce myself. My name's John Stark--that's +the name I play under, that is. I'm an actor. I'm trying out a new +play, the 'Jail-bird.' Perhaps you've seen the bill-boards." + +"Of course," said Harry. The title sprang instantly into his mind, +blazoned on a gaudy bill-board against a maple-shaded street: + + "Do not fail to see this Talented Star + In his Gripping Drama, _The Jail-Bird_." + + +It multiplied, stamping itself on a thousand walls, a chromatic +procession tumbling into the distance. The other nodded in a +self-satisfied way. "It's a great play. Got the real human dope in +it. It'll go big, too. That's why I come to these places--to study +'business.' See that teamster with the pock-marked face and the tattoo +on his arm? What a make-up that would be!" + +The burly, half-drunken driver, in red-flannel shirt with a snake-whip +in his armpit, his back to the bar, poured from a gurgling black +bottle. "Hear what it says?" he hiccoughed--"'It's +good--s'good--s'good--s'good--s'good!'" + +John Stark withdrew his eyes from the fascinating study, as a waiter, +in an apron that had in some remote epoch aspired to white, with a +strip of soiled towelling thrown over one arm, set two thick glasses on +the table, with a surly "well?" + +"I'll take a silver fizz," said the actor. + +"The same," said Sevier--"and be quick about it!" + +The harsh admonition thrust across the noise. The phrase had no +meaning to Sevier, it had been merely the echo of another bidding that +he had given at some other time, in some other world, repeating itself +now when the hidden spring of association was touched. But it brought +a resentful glare from the waiter. The loungers standing nearest +shuffled truculently, and the teamster by the bar turned an ugly look +upon them. The man in the dingy apron thumped down a black demijohn on +the table. + +"Take it straight or not at all," he said in a surly tone. + +Harry's companion poured both glasses. He leaned across the table with +sparkling eyes. "I'm in the title-role," he confided. "The story is +like this. I'm a business man, and the other chap--he has a grudge +against me--has me in his power. He's the Great What Ho--a regular +top-notcher, plenty of money, a winner with the women, horses, +steam-yacht, everything. The house he lives in was mine, but he's got +it by trickery and seized it while I was abroad. I come back and find +him in possession. But in the house--he doesn't know this, you +see--hidden behind a panel in the library, are papers that will show +him up and put him behind the bars. I've got to have those papers, and +the only way is to get into the place and take them." + +He paused and sipped from the glass before him, then resumed: + +"Curious thing, luck. I've had no end of trouble getting up the +scenery, but to-day I saw exactly the lay-out I want to picture--a +whacking big house in this very town. Right in the heart of the city +too, not a mile from here, but shut in from the road. Belongs to about +the richest man in the place. I kodaked it for my scene-painter. Look +here." + +He took a pencil from his pocket and sketched rapidly on the deal +table-top as he went on. + +"It's set in trees and there's a wide, oval porch along the front--like +this--fine old southern effect, eh?--with Cape Jessamine bushes under +the windows. A long wing runs down one side--here. In there is the +library. I come on in a kind of prologue, no lines--shadows and +moonlight, town-hall clock striking off one side--you know. I'm +desperate. I try the doors. They're locked, of course. But there's a +little window on the second floor that's open. I climb up a trellis +and crawl in. There I am in the house." + +He stopped and emptied his glass. + +"There's a two-minute dark--no curtain, but a quick change, then lights +up and the stage shows the Great What Ho's library, with me on the +threshold, for the opening scene. I get the papers from the panel, and +just then--" + +"Yes, yes," said Harry. He had been staring steadily at the +other--staring with his outer eyes, but with that curious inner vision, +which was the gift of the intoxicant he had drunk, seeing himself, +detached and moving through the significant scene that was being +sketched before him, his alert but liquor-bound mind filling in +strange, lurid detail which rushed forward to crowd the obscure spaces. +He reached forward and gripped the actor by the arm with a force that +made him wince--"and then--" + +A stillness had struck the noisier babble and Harry's mental connection +on a sudden broke. A young woman in the red Jersey and poke-bonnet of +the Salvation Army had passed about the room and was now standing by +the table. She stretched her tambourine. "If you please, gentlemen," +she said. + +Harry laid a silver half-dollar in her tambourine and his companion did +the same, when the waiter who had served them spoke to her: "Clear out, +you. You've got your money, now go." + +"And be quick about it!" said Harry, distinctly. + +The remark had not the excuse of proprietorship and it roused fury in +the sluggish minds about them to whom the addition was extraneous and +gratuitous, a smug insult of one who from his manner belonged to a +class that despised them, offered to one whose daily habit proved that +she did not. With an oath the drunken teamster of the pock-marked +visage lurched forward, rolling a red-flannel sleeve along a hairy +biceps. + +The dingy Ganymede thrust him back. "Leave him to me!" he ground +savagely, and turning, struck at Harry with envenomed force. + +The fist, however, did not reach home. Harry's brain and eye were +working with the deadly precision of the practised athlete. The +suggestion of combat was complete, and with sober caution and reason +dead, the bodily mechanism rushed to meet it. There was a +lightning-like parry--a crisp, smashing return blow. Then suddenly the +room turned a shambles, a red surging mass of hands that tore, of +thrown missiles, of shattering glass, through which sounded a shrill +whistle and the tattoo of a thorn-baton on the pavement outside. + +Two minutes later Harry stood unhurt in the open air, and a blue-jacket +held the door against a cursing pandemonium. "_Run_, you fool!" he +panted. "I can't hold it but a minute. _Run_!" + +And Harry ran. Not from fear or dread, but in instant response to that +mental spur, without reason, or logic, or conscious thought. The new +mental formula for the present moment superseded the old. The dingy +saloon, the effervescent young Thespian, the fight--all fell away, were +gone, and there was only the rigid empty calm through which he sped, +and far above him the sound of a wind like a silken sea. It was close +on midnight, the more decorous streets into which he presently emerged +deserted, for intermittent clouds were now blotting the moonlight and a +sprinkle of rain was falling. The sparse pedestrians stared or shrank +away, but none followed, no patrolling guardian of the law forbade. He +ran without direction or purpose, until suddenly--he halted. + +He had come to the side of a great enclosure, the grounds of a mansion, +surrounded by a high stone wall with tiled top, in which was set a gate +with tall posts holding dim-lit yellow globes. It was not at these, +however, that Harry was looking; his gaze went beyond, where, touched +by the rainy moonlight, stretched the long façade of a Colonial house +with a wide oval porch. At one side was a wing, with a lattice +climbing over its doorway, and the damp air was full of the scent of +jessamine. + +He stiffened. The contours fell with fateful correspondence over +another picture which had been etched on his brain that night with the +sharp outlines of a photographic plate. The old spring had been +touched, and the eerie mechanism was responding. It was his own house, +but now it sheltered the Great What Ho, and in that wing was hidden the +thing he must secure for his own salvation! + +Harry entered the gate and crept across the lawn, warily, from bush to +bush. In the curious dual-consciousness that seemed to divide his self +into two independent yet identical entities, he had no sensation of +strangeness that he should already have made that slinking journey once +before, that each detail should possess the quality of predestination. +In the shadow of the ivied walls he softly tried the front door. It +was locked, but he had known it would be. He looked up; he had known +what he should see--the small window in the wing, open, as he could see +from the swaying of the light curtain in the air. + +He crept to the lattice and deftly and softly drew himself up. No twig +snapped, scarce a leaf rustled beneath his careful movements. In a +moment he touched the sill of the open window and slid inside. + +He was in an upper hall and soft, luxurious carpet was under his feet. +By the dim light from the window he crept noiselessly down the stair. +There before him stood the door behind which lay the thing he must +have. He put his hand on the knob, turned it softly and opened the +door. + +The mental picture which he had been tracing suddenly frayed and +vanished like a dissolving view. The room was brightly lighted. At +one side sat a great safe, beside whose steel door stood two men, one +tall and thin, whose eyes glittered through the holes of a black +cambric mask, the other short and stocky with red-rimmed eyes and a +shock of sand-coloured hair. + +They stood like setters at point, crouching tensely forward, and the +latter held a pistol levelled at him. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +THE PRICE + +With the sudden disintegration of the mental picture he had been +tracing, and the instant stoppage of the tense action of mind and body, +Harry Sevier came to himself. He awoke as he had done on the night of +the trial, with the abrupt halt of his motor at the +railroad-crossing--awoke instantly to knowledge of himself, but dazed +and shaken, grasping at phantasmagoric fragments that were swiftly +dissolving in his brain, in a bewilderment in which he could only stare +voicelessly at the black mask that confronted him, at the round muzzle +that spelled danger. + +The man of the sand-coloured hair spoke: "It ain't him," he said in a +low voice. "Not one of the servants, either." He stepped forward. +"How did you get in?" + +"I don't--know," said Harry. "Yes, I--I fancy it was through a window." + +"What did you come for?" + +"I wanted to--get something." + +There was an instant's pause. Then his questioner came forward with a +cat-like tread. His free hand busied itself in deft exploration. "No +gun on him," he said. + +Something like a chuckle came from behind the mask. "I reckon he's +telling the truth, but he's a new one and we scared about all out of +his head there ever was in it!" + +The other turned one side to where a heavy portière screened an alcove, +parted the curtains and set a chair in the hidden space. He pointed to +it. "Sit there," he gruffly commanded, and to the man in the mask he +added, "Get on with your part of the job. We won't take no risks--I'll +take care of _him_!" + +Harry sat down. The dream-like fragments at which he had been grasping +were gone now into thin air, and out of the misty limbo the past was +growing back: the note he had received, the smashed wall-cabinet, the +fiery drink that scorched his throat, his mad masquerade, the boarding +of the train at the station, the friendly, stupifying flash, then +flight, on and on--and then, this lighted room, the safe, the levelled +weapons! Into what sordid drama of the under-world had he wandered? + +He flinched at the pressure of a cold steel ring against his +temple--the man with the sand-coloured hair was "taking care" of him. +The latter leaned forward and peered searchingly into his face. +"Haven't I seen you before, somewheres?" he asked. + +"Who knows?" said Harry. He had answered that look by one that, even +as he spoke, had opened to strange intelligence. The stocky frame, the +small red-rimmed eyes, the up-thrust, wiry hair belonged to his client +of that far away trial, the man whom he had sent to a convict's cell +and who now, by route of ball and stripe, had fled to the dismal +demesne of habitual criminality! "Who knows!" Paddy the Brick had not +now the piteous, shrinking look that had been turned to his counsel in +the courtroom! The manhood was gone from the mottled features, which +now wore the furtive look of the hunted, the sign-manual of cunning, +incorrigibility and debauch. + +Paddy the Brick withdrew his eyes. The involuntary question had +passed. There was, after all, little in the smooth-shaven countenance +of the man he guarded to suggest a bearded face that his memory +searched for. + +"Quiet!" warned the man in the mask, and kneeling by the safe door, +resumed the delicate manipulation which had been so startlingly +interrupted. He turned the combination swiftly and deftly, his +side-face pressed against the unyielding steel, his ear listening +intently to the fall of the tumblers that chattered like elfin +castenets. + +Harry sat silent and moveless, sharply conscious of the cold ring +against his temple. Whither had his besotted flight carried him? To +some distant city, into another state perhaps, where he now figured in +a coarse and desperate adventure that might end anywhere, in some +shameful expose which he could not foresee. In whose house was he? +Whose money was it these nightly prowlers intended? And what ironic +demon had beckoned him here to play this passive part in the despoiling? + +There was suddenly a sharp click, a turn of the nickelled handle, and +on mute hinges the safe-door opened. "So!" said the man in the mask, +complacently. He began to pull open drawers and ransack pigeon-holes, +his fingers passing deftly through the papers they contained. + +On the instant there was a muffled sound in the hall outside--a door +swinging to, and voices. + +"_S-s-s!_" The low hiss was an incarnate menace. The man by the safe +swung the steel door to, but without closing its lock, and snapped off +the lights. The room fell into thick darkness. Harry felt, rather +than heard, that the other had swiftly entered the alcove, and drawn +the portière into place. His companion had made no sound, but the +aching circlet bit hard again into Harry's temple, with a warning as +sharp as it was silent. + +The door opened, there was a groping footstep, then the lights went up, +and a woman's voice, clear and imperious, mingled with the lower +answers of the obsequious servant who had shown her in--a familiar +voice at which Harry's blood seemed to grow still in his veins: + +"No matter how late he is, I will wait. You say he is at his +office--is it so near as that? Yes, I think you may send for him--no, +wait--that telephone on the desk! Could I speak with him? No--I think +after all I would rather wait. What number did you say? +'Seven-thirty-two Sumner?' Thank you. Then if he does not come soon, +I will call him up. Thank you--no, I want nothing." + +Harry repressed an impulse to cry aloud. A thin streak of light showed +between the edges of the silken hanging, through which the man in the +mask was peering, and for a slender instant, under the crook's elbow, +he could see into the room. The slender figure standing there under +the chandelier was Echo Allen! + +She was in a dark travelling dress and wore a light veil through which +her profile looked strained and white. The unexpected sight of her +intensified the haggard pain of heart which had come back to Harry with +his awakening, and this was staggered by the knowledge that they two +were together in this unknown dwelling. + +The door closed upon the servant. Behind the portière the red-rimmed +eyes peered questioningly into the eyelet holes of the black mask. +They said as plainly as speech, "There is only the woman. Why not make +for the open--now?" But the other was an older hand. The room had but +the single door and the servant might be standing on the other side. +Grim danger lurked in hue and cry, and there was always the chance that +the woman might weary of waiting and go. He had a liking for the long +chance. He shook his head. + +Harry's straining ears caught now the dragging rustle of a skirt. Echo +was moving slowly across the floor, and in a moment he saw her again +through the slender opening. She was standing tense and straight, her +hands wrung together, finger twisting against finger, before the desk +telephone. He saw her hand go out to the instrument, then draw back as +though it had been a poisonous snake. Then suddenly he saw her seize +the transmitter and put it to her ear. The bell whirred. + +"Madison, seven-thirty-two." + +There was a pause, in which she repeated the number, and in it Harry +felt that her face had hardened and set, like some cooling plastic +beneath an invisible mould. + +"Is that--is it ... Mr. Cameron Craig?" + +In spite of his iron control, Harry could not repress a start. He knew +now where he was! The house behind whose curtain he perforce skulked +with a brace of thieves, was Cameron Craig's! And she, on this very +day, had journeyed here too. A sense of an overfate, sardonic and +unescapable, rushed upon him. What a topsy-turveydom of chance, what a +dove-tailing of accident, had wrought for this strange _contretemps_! +In the instant she waited a harrowing question stabbed him. What was +she doing here, to-night, at midnight--in this environment which had +bred unseemly stories--to enter which, under such circumstances, a +woman must be unmindful of what should be most dear? + +"... Do you know my voice? Yes, you are right.... Unbelievable, yes. +Many things are unbelievable that--happen. Listen. I am at your +house, in your library.... No! Wait. I have something to say to you, +_now_. You shall answer it first. Once you asked me to marry you. I +will do so, on one condition.... The--the letters written by my +father. You will not use them, publish them. You will give them into +my hands.... Yes.... One has been photographed--yes, the plate. You +swear to do so, when I am your wife? ... Yes, to-night--if +you--wish.... What? In--in five minutes? ..." + +The receiver clattered down upon the desk, as she sank into a chair and +covered her face with her hands. To her the broken sentences had +knelled hope gone, the passing of youth and love, the coming of a night +in which was no star; but to the man sitting in such assiduous +stillness behind the curtains, they had told a story that sent the warm +blood coursing through his veins. Instead of being false to him, Echo +was really sacrificing herself on the altar of name and family. She +did not love the man with whom she had just spoken! It was constraint +that had sent her there at that dubious hour, to make a bitter bargain. +Letters written by her father? What they were--in what way +compromising--Harry could not guess. Some indiscreet correspondence +perhaps, which, twisted out of context, might be made ground of +malicious political criticism. He knew her love for her father. In +some way she had learned of these letters, had scented danger to him, +and now would ward the harm from him at any cost to herself! "Think as +gently of me as you can"--the words of her note passed through Harry's +mind. When she wrote that she had known that she should give herself +to Craig! He felt a whirl of rage. The cowardly, contemptible cad, +who would have his desire at the cost of all that was decent and +clean-handed! It should never be, never, never! Why else had fate +dropped him there, like a stone from a sling? And yet for the moment +he was as helpless as a rat in a trap. There, only a half-dozen steps +away lay those letters, the safe door unlocked. Yet the steely +pressure on his temple told him that a single word, a move, and he +would be ingloriously past rendering aid to anybody, with a bullet in +his skull. + +Harry was conscious that the two men beside him exchanged glances--they +were going to make a dash for it. His every nerve tightened. But at +that instant the door opened upon the obsequious servant. "Did you +ring, Madame?" he asked. + +"I rang the telephone," she replied dully. "I called up Mr. Craig. He +is coming." + +"Very good, madame." This time he did not leave, but moved about the +room, setting straight a book upon the table, adjusting a vase, +glancing furtively at her the while. The moment for flight had passed. + +Endless minutes ensued. Then in the strained silence there fell a +sharp step outside, and the servant went quickly from the room. Harry +felt a little tremor run over him. There was the sound of a key +grating in a lock. The outer door opened and clanged shut. + +Behind the portière Harry sat motionless, the muzzle of the weapon at +his temple, his hair stirring to the suppressed breathing above his +head, and the man in the mask shifted his felt-shod feet, restlessly +but without sound. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +PADDY THE BRICK INTERVENES + +"I could not believe your voice." The heavy tones jarred across the +quiet. "I could not believe that it was actually true!" + +"Do you accept my offer?" Echo's voice was without a tremor; it held +the same hard quality that controlled her features. + +"Accept!" He came toward her--would have taken her hands, but that she +drew back. "Do you remember what I told you that day in your garden, a +year ago--that nothing counted, nothing but you? For you I would +barter every ambition I have ever known. I would sell the world, if I +had it!" + +"When you told me that," she said steadily, "I answered that I did not +love you. I have not changed in that regard, nor shall I ever change. +I can bring you no love, but I can--can marry you." + +He laughed harshly. "Very well; I would not have it different, after +all. I am not made on the pattern of other men: I would rather take +you against your will--you will be all the more mine! I love even that +fine disdain of yours! For it shall not last--I swear that! You shall +love me in the end, as I have loved you!" + +"Loved!" she repeated, with an accent of chill and wondering scorn. + +"Yes, loved!" The words were almost a cry: they held fierce protest, +even anger, yet there was in them a kind of appeal that lent them a +sombre and tragic dignity. "But you despised me! You had stood first +of all things. But if you could be nothing to me, then the game I +played stood second. I played, as always, to win. The cards fell +oddly--your father's letters, no matter how, came into my hands. They +were to my purpose, and I would have used them. Why should I hold +back? Out of regard for him? I regard no man!" + +"Yet he is my father. And you profess--ah, if this is love, I had +rather you hated me! I know nothing of a love that is neither brave +nor compassionate, that strikes at the aged and defenceless and that is +without--honour!" + +He had not taken his eyes from her face, and now there grew in them a +strange, haggard fire. Relentless and unscrupulous as was that love of +his, Harry could have pitied him at that moment. "Honour?" he said. +"It is an empty word to me! What is honour, what is anything, to me +without you--Echo, Echo!" + +"If you love me so--and now, indeed, I will believe it--give me the +letters!" She took a step toward him, her hands clasped together. "Be +as chivalrous as you are strong! Do not do this ignoble thing to break +my life! I may be your friend, if not--that other. Surely you cannot +want to take me at such a price! Do this and all my life long I will +be grateful! Oh, I would ask you on my knees! Give me the letters!" + +He looked at her where she stood breathlessly, with arms extended, her +face bent and pleading, and the sight opened wide within him an abyss +that thronged thick with evil passions. The gentler purpose that for a +heart-beat had fluttered white wings above the chasm dropped +plummet-like into the depths. Give her up? Now, when she came to him +with her offer? Resign her--to that tippling _dilettante_, that +flamboyant fop and fool who had drowned his success in a bottle? Not +he! A savage elation sprang up in him. + +"When you are my wife!" he said. + +She straightened, withdrawing her arms with a little gesture of despair +and relinquishment. "Where are the letters?" + +He pointed to the safe. "They are there." + +"When will you give them to me?" + +"To-night--the same hour you marry me. You shall burn them if you +like, here--in this very room--with your own hands." + +"You swear?" + +"I do. And whatever else men may say of me, there is no man living who +can say I have ever lied." + +There was an instant's silence and when Craig spoke again all feeling +had vanished from his voice. He was once more the deliberate and +incisive man of action. He snapped the lid of his watch. + +"It is very late," he said, "but it can be managed. It shall be at the +hotel--you can rest there while I make the necessary arrangements. My +chauffeur is off-duty to-night, but it is only a block away, +fortunately. Shall you mind walking?" + +"No," she said, apathetically. + +Harry was holding himself hard. They were going. He saw clearly his +course of action. His two partners in that sorry escapade might have +what they had come for--he could compound with them, could take the +letters to the hotel and put them into Echo's hands. She would never +need to know how he had gained them--that drunken episode, whose very +memory must bring a shaming flush to his cheek, should be buried +forever! The letters would not have come to her from Craig, and she +would stand absolved of her promise. But even as this ran through his +mind, fate thrust its hidden hand from the cloud. + +"One moment," said Craig. "When I came in, it was beginning to rain. +You will need a cloak of some sort." He turned abruptly to the +curtained alcove. + +The pressure on Harry's temple relaxed. The black mask thrust forward, +the man with the sand-coloured hair parted the hangings--his +outstretched arm shot out toward the advancing figure. Harry's gaze +saw something red leap up from Craig's temple, even before the +terrifying concussion rocked the room--a sound threaded by Echo's +scream. + +There was a rush, a curse and a scramble, flying feet and a dismayed +shout from the hall--then a shocked quiet in which he stood +disconcerted and appalled, staring between the shielding curtains, +through pungent smoke-wreaths, at a girl, her hand over her eyes, who +shrank in overmastering terror from a massive form that lay collapsed +on the rug before her--Cameron Craig, inert and still, blind and deaf +now to sight and sound, the brain empty of scheming, the full cup of +his ambition dashed from his lips by the crashing bullet of a slinking +house-breaker. + + + + +CHAPTER XX + +WHAT MATTERED MOST + +With that scream Harry's every nerve had become as tense as wire. In +his mind's eye he saw her innocency tangled in this hideous web of +burglary--perhaps of murder, her name on every lip, her face blazoned +in every yellow extra, as the "woman in the case!" The crisis spelled +_now_ and he acted with swift instinct. + +He snatched the black mask from the floor and adjusted it to his own +face, then darted to the safe and jerked open its heavy door. While +the retreating servant's alarm still echoed from the hallway of the +empty wing, his fingers, with the swiftness of desperation, went +searching the papers in the safe. He came almost instantly upon what +he sought--a thin packet of letters, tied together with a small +photographic plate, ticketed with the name "Beverly Allen." + +Echo had shrunk back, was leaning now against the wall, thriving terror +of him in her eyes. He came toward her. + +"Here!" he said, his voice muffled by the mask. "The letters! Take +them and go--go instantly!" + +"He has--killed him!" she gasped. "Why do you--" + +Harry was sick with apprehension. As in the instant of drowning the +smothering intelligence sees pass in vivid review before it the +innumerable mosaic of a busy life-time, so he saw, swiftly arrayed in +the imminent climax, the perilous hazards by which she was surrounded. +Suppose Craig was dead, and she were apprehended, the letters put in +evidence, and she told the truth, word for word, as she knew it. If +her own estimate of their significance was a correct one, might not the +most sinister suspicion then rest upon her? And if, as seemed likely, +she was wrong in that surmise--even were the presence of accidental +burglars proven--what could explain her presence there, alone in +Craig's midnight library? Would it not seem to the great sceptical, +sophisticated world only a tale invented to cover the old hackneyed +story of a woman's infatuation? Would it not ruin her? He thrust the +packet into her shaking hands, seized her arm and dragged her to the +hall. + +"Quick!" he said, roughly. "The house is roused! Hurry--for heaven's +sake!" He thrust her through the outer door. "Down the path to the +gate! Go!" + +She looked at him a breathless instant. On the floor above them a +window was flung open and a shout rang out. Then, drawing a breath +that was a sob, she caught the letters to her breast, turned, and fled +in an anguish of speed through the misty shrubbery. + +In the bluntness of the dilemma Harry's only thought had been to get +her away and speedily--then to make his own escape. For he himself +stood also in evil case. If Echo's presence there would be difficult +to explain, what could be said of his own? To whom, save perhaps the +occasional student of aberrant mental phenomena, would the true story +of his blind and besotted adventuring seem credible? It came to him +instantly now, however, that to insure her safe retreat, he must +jeopardise, perhaps fatally, his own. The two house-breakers had no +doubt planned their flitting--possibly a handy ladder in some hidden +angle of the wall; but the open gate was the only route he knew, and he +had sent Echo by this way. For him to follow in her footsteps would +draw the damnable hue and cry and double the odds against her. She +needed, perhaps, only minutes, but the stir of frightened awakening +that sounded through the upper floor told him that for him even seconds +might be fatal. Great beads of sweat broke on his forehead. + +And what an alternative! He, Harry Sevier, of position and clean +honour, to be arrested red-handed, in apparent comradeship with +criminals, a partner in a desperate attempt at robbery under arms! To +be haled to court, to sit as he had seen men sit so often, under a +perilous judgment! For with the logic of the legal mind perilous +indeed Harry knew it would be. If Craig lay dead in the room behind +him, he would be charged with his murder! A chill ran over him. + +As these thoughts rushed through his mind, Harry passed through a +crucial episode of his mental life--its first vital and supreme moment. +It was not of himself he thought now. It was only of Echo. What +became of him mattered little. It was she who mattered most! At +whatever risk to himself he must turn the pursuit from her! + +A burly man-servant, bareheaded and coatless, came panting from the +rear between the trees. Lest he take the path toward the gate, Harry +blundered, in his view, across the lighted porch and dashed around the +wing, the other giving instant cry. Harry led him on, doubling about +the shrubbery. Near at hand the wall reared, hopelessly high and +without a break. He skirted a huddle of servants' quarters, rounded +the main building and came again to the front. And then, approaching +at a double-quick across the lawn, he caught the flash of a bull's-eye. +With a wave of thankfulness he realised that the helmeted figure who +carried it was coming from the gate. Echo had passed through safely! + +Unseen he slipped again into the shadow of the great open door from +which he had come. Until that moment he had not realised that he still +held in his hand the black mask. There was nothing to do now--his own +escape was impossible, but he had saved her! + +Suddenly the hall light went up, and with it a brusque voice spoke from +the stairway. + +"Hands up! I'm covering you. He's here, lads--we've got him cornered. +Tell that silly maid to quit screaming and ring up the police." + +Harry had lifted his hands above his head. The black mask fell at his +feet. "All right," he said. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + +CRAIG'S WAY + +A half-hour later a surgeon and a nurse had been hurriedly summoned +from the hospital, the wounded man had been carried to an upper +chamber, and Harry Sevier set in a room across the hall from the +library, under guard, hand-cuffs on his wrists. A blue-coated +policeman stood grimly at his side, another at the door, and from time +to time the white, awed countenance of some servant appeared to stare +at him from the threshold and disappear. + +His own face, though haggard, was apparently unmoved by the strenuous +excitement that hung about the place, yet behind the affected +nonchalance his brain was in a turmoil of hope and of dread. In the +swift and breathless decision that the event had forced upon him he had +not had time to weigh all chances. It had seemed then that the vise +must grip either him or Echo, and that the choice lay in his hands. In +the moments that followed, however, as he sat moveless in the strident +confusion, he had realised that the problem had been by no means so +simple, and it had come to him with a pang that Echo's certain safety +had lain only in his own escape. + +She now believed that she had been extricated from danger by a common +thief who, in his rifling of the safe, had seen the letters she pleaded +with Craig for, and in the final tragic moment had taken pity on her +plight. When she learned that one of those house-breakers had been +Harry Sevier, what then? She would never believe him the vulgar +criminal! Her imagination would rush to another explanation which +would give his presence there a dismal significance. She would +conclude that he had somehow discovered the strait in which she +conceived her father stood, and in an attempt to retrieve the letters +had met Craig's chicanery with technical crime--made use, which to him +had seemed justifiable, of cracksmen, and with them had been caught in +the emergency whose sudden panic had evoked that shot from the alcove! +Whichever way the tragedy turned, it would be infinitely darkened for +her by the reflection that it had been her strait which had brought the +trouble upon him. + +And if murder had been done, and she learned with shrinking heart that +he, Harry, stood accused by the law, what then? She knew that his hand +had not pulled the trigger, for she had seen the face of the shooter. +Her gasping exclamation--"He has--killed him!"--had made that clear to +Harry. She would rush to the rescue, forgetful of all else, and with +her testimony, bring down the avalanche upon her! + +On the heels of these reflections a thrill of hope had come to him. +Craig was not yet dead--there had been no sign from above-stairs since +the hurried arrival of the surgeon. Also it was anticipated that he +would recover consciousness. Harry's knowledge of criminal procedure +told him that this was the meaning of his long detention there. Should +consciousness come, if merely for an appreciable interval, he would be +brought face to face with the wounded man. It was this that all +awaited now, and in it Harry discerned the sole possibility of saving +the situation. + +"Craig must have seen him when he fired!" he told himself. "For the +fraction of a second they were face to face. If he is able to make a +statement, it will clear me! He will be silent about Echo, too, for he +will expect, if he lives, to make her his wife--it will be a long time, +probably, before he misses the letters! And if I am disassociated, by +Craig himself, from the attack on his life, there will no longer be any +question of her involving herself to defend me!" His heart lightened +and the great load seemed to lift from his soul. It was the +implication of Echo that had made the situation impossible--the +unbelievable coincidence of their joint presence--in damnable +propinquity with the shooting. With Echo eliminated and he himself +free from that cowardly indictment, would not all yet be well? He was +well enough known. He was no sordid house-breaker--in spite of the +humiliating incident of his entrance there that night! + +His thought broke, as a spruce young man, with the air of authority +which is the perquisite and prerequisite of the private-secretary, +entered and whispered with the guardian at the door. + +Harry's heart seemed to stop beating. "Is he--dead?" he asked. + +The young man looked at him coldly. "Not yet." + +"Will he live?" + +There was a longer pause before the other replied: "It's too soon to +tell yet. It's up to you to hope so, I imagine." + +He whispered again with the officer, then crossed the hall to the +library, which he entered, closing the door behind him. + + +When the secretary reappeared he went quickly up the stair and along a +hall. There he tapped on a door and opened it. + +The room disclosed was the one in which Craig lay. At one side was a +small table covered with a white cloth, with a _mêlée_ of nickelled +instruments, rolls of absorbent bandaging and a basin of reddened +liquid. The air was full of the sickish-sweet _halitus_ of some drug. +Craig's head on the pillow was wound with the white swathing and the +nurse stood beside the bed. The doctor came forward, and the secretary +spoke to him in an undertone. + +All at once Craig opened his eyes. He looked acutely at the faces so +near him, the cloth-covered table with its instruments, the +white-capped nurse. + +"I--know," he said. He tried to lift a hand to his bandaged head. +"How--bad?" + +The doctor laid a professional hand on the one that strayed across the +coverlet. "We want to pull you through, Mr. Craig," he said with +soothing assurance, "and you must help us by wiping every anxiety from +your mind. Only a dozen words with your secretary here, to help you +stop even thinking, and then you are going to sleep." + +The young man came to the bed-side. "It was an attempted burglary, as +you probably realised, sir. Two men were hidden in the library and you +were shot when they tried to get away. One of them has been caught. +The servants say a lady was with you at the time and the police want to +know who she was." + +Craig did not reply immediately. Echo had slipped away in the +confusion! Well, so much the better. Her presence could not have +helped. It was no more to his interest than to hers--since she was to +be his wife--that the story of her midnight call should be bruited +abroad. "I--don't know--her," he said. + +"I'll tell them so," said the secretary. "The safe had been opened, +but its contents are practically intact. I have checked up all the +papers on the list and there seems to be only one thing missing. +Perhaps you took that out yourself. It is the last item on the list--a +package of letters." + +A quick gleam crossed the white face on the pillow. "Gone? No--no. +Impossible. They were--of no--value to--any one but me." + +"You may have put them in your desk," said the other. He turned to the +surgeon. "The police want to bring up the man for identification." + +The man of medicines frowned. "I suppose it has to be," he said. +"Tell them to do so quickly. Only a word," he warned the wounded man. + +A moment or two later the secretary tapped again at the door and it +opened upon the two policemen. Harry walked between, the chain on his +wrists clinking lightly as he stepped. One of them came forward to the +foot of the great bed. + +"You saw the man who shot you, Mr. Craig?" + +"Yes." + +He beckoned and Harry and his guardian moved forward into range of +vision. + +"You solemnly swear that what you shall say is the truth?" + +"Yes." + +"Is this the one?" + +Craig stared--a look of negation that made Harry's heart leap. It was +a look also that held no recognition, and in that instant, for the +first time since that night's harrowing series of events had begun, +Harry remembered that he stood in strange guise, in unaccustomed +clothes and with smooth-shaven chin. + +But into the eyes that gazed from the pillow recognition speedily +came--recognition strangely commingled of incredulity, amaze, +distempered suspicion, leaping swiftly to a slow, deadly certainty. A +lurid sequence was running across the fevered mind that the man +confronting him could not read: + +Harry Sevier sculking there and disguised--one of the burglars! The +missing letters--Echo had gone with them! It had been a cunning, +hypocritical plot, then, with a hired safe-robber and thug--and they +had tricked and baffled him. Craig gasped. His eyes suffused with +blood. He had said that he had not known the woman. Yet he could +still score! Living or dying, he could drag down Harry Sevier to a +black depth from which he should never rise again! + +He laughed, a harsh jarring laugh. His face became convulsed. He +tried to lift himself on an elbow. The nurse thrust her strong arms +beneath the pillow and raised him. He pointed his finger at Harry. + +"Yes!" he said in a crackling whisper. "He is the man who--did it! +He--shot me!" + +"Do you know him?" The officer spoke clearly, leaning forward. + +"Yes. I--he is--" + +But that was all. With a final vain effort, his head fell back on the +pillow. That last flare of rage, of revengeful hatred, had exhausted +the sick vitality, and he was gone into unconsciousness. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + +HARRY DECIDES + +The steel handcuff bit more hardly into Harry's wrist, but he did not +feel it. His eyes were fixed and his face had grown grey. The +accusation, with all its shuddering implications, had surged over him +like the assurance of the unescapable end, the last engulfing wave of +hopeless finality which, in its subsidence, left him cold and still. +Malice and hatred had closed the door of hope. + +His sacrifice had gone for nothing. He could not save Echo. The +matter had been taken from his hands. She must be involved. If murder +had been done, her passionate denial in his defence would no doubt +suffice to save him--he knew his southern juries!--but at what a price +to her would be his salvation! For though sufficient doubt would be +insinuated to legally acquit him, in the eyes of their world harrowing +suspicions must always cling to her. Collusion between her and +himself, her lover, to secure compromising letters, a guilty +understanding embracing possible murder! A midnight _rendezvous_ with +one lover, converted into swift tragedy by the vengeful pursuit of the +other! So the speculations would run, and the baleful whispers would +follow her all her life. What matter though she married him? Would +love make up for that? + +It was the Harry Sevier of remorseless logic, of clear thinking and +rigid analysis, who reasoned now. + +A tall old clock stood at the turn of the echoing stair and as he +descended between his two uniformed attendants, grimly watchful of his +every movement, he noted mechanically that it was two o'clock. It came +to him with a chill and awed amazement how much might happen within one +round of the clock. When those hands had last pointed to two o'clock +he had stood in his office, a man of reputation and newly-ordered life, +with all his heart beating to love; now he was disgraced, the woman he +loved about to know the shame and hideous notoriety of scandal, both of +them to be pilloried together as principals in another of those +horrifying revelations of double-life which at periodic intervals shock +a community's decorum! + +It was not for himself he was thinking first. His pain for Echo +swallowed up his own. As he sat in the cab between his guardians, +bound for the station-house and the police interrogatory that should +fling abroad its sensation in the morning's papers, his composure +crumbled. He bent and put his cold face in his colder hands. His lips +moved voicelessly. + +"Echo ... Echo!" he whispered. "You have had my love, you have it now. +You could have my life, if I could give it--every day, every drop of my +blood, would not be enough to pay the price of what you must bear! But +it is out of my power. I thought I could save you, my darling! But I +can't.... I can't.... If I might only suffer alone, and you never +know!" + +He lifted his head with a start. A thought had darted to his mind like +an impinging ray of light. Why _should_ she ever know? Why should any +one know--if Craig died? Only Craig who had known him in the past, had +recognised him as Harry Sevier. Perhaps that was the greatest risk he +should have to run. He could take refuge in silence, tell nothing, +explain nothing. She would not know that the real shooter had not been +taken. Could he maintain under the searching purview of the law that +anonymity which he had sought to insure during the debauch into which +he had so avidly plunged yesterday afternoon? Why not? He had so +adjusted his home affairs, luckily, that a long time--perhaps many +months--would elapse before his absence would be narrowly questioned. +He was now in a city where he was not known: hundreds of miles of steel +rails lay between him and the crowds to whom he was a familiar figure. +His dark beard--so distinguishing a feature--was gone. He had +discarded the characteristic gold-rimmed eye-glasses. Not an article +of clothing he wore bore his name. His present face might be flung on +printed pages to the four winds, and who, even of those who had seen +him day in and day out, would say, "It is Harry Sevier!" + +There were but two contingencies. If Craig recovered sufficient +consciousness to speak the name that had fainted on his lips when they +two had been face to face in that room of hurried surgery--then his +incognito would fall and fate must have its way. If Craig died without +recovering consciousness--this, provided his own identity was not +discovered, was the one way out for Echo. + +For him it meant, probably, the last risk. He had now to meet no mere +assumption of guilt, but an accusation, direct and unqualified, made +under oath, in what might well be the hour of death. He could not +offer in rebuttal evidence of character, reputation and standing. He +was deliberately refusing to call his only witness to the fact. Yet he +did not waver. The Harry Sevier who under the stress of impulse had +acted so swiftly to save the woman he loved, elected the same choice +now. + +He would do it. Whatever the risk, whatever the ultimate cost to him, +he would do it! + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + +THE BROKEN PICTURE + +"Hyuh yo' is, honey, smack-dab on time!" called 'Lige's cheery voice, +as he took Echo's bag. "Yo' fo'got ter say which train yo' comin' back +on yistiddy, so ah ben waitin' wid dee cya'age fo dee las' fo'. Ah was +figuratin' on yo' gittin' hyuh fo' dinnah, sho'." + +As they bowled along toward home Echo wondered if she could really be +the same girl who had driven away the day before along those self-same +streets! The strenuous events through which she had passed seemed the +terrifying creation of a dream, a nightmarish panorama of the sick +imagination, so wild and incredible all appeared in the serene light of +this day: The painful scene in Craig's library that had ended in swift +tragedy, with the apparition between the portières of that baleful +face--with its narrow eyes and upthrust of nondescript hair it had +stamped itself ineffacably upon her memory!--the deafening shot and the +after confusion--those breathless moments when she had run along the +wet path, with a sense of flashing lights and alarm behind her--her +safe emergence into the demure street, where she dared not run, +compelling herself to walk albeit ready to faint with fear at sight of +a patrolling policeman--the ghastly delay in the stuffy waiting-room of +the station where she had checked her bag on arrival--the suffocating +relief when at last the express pulled out, bearing her away +unchallenged. + +Through the long night she had tossed feverishly in her berth, without +undressing, at intervals feeling the meaning of the catastrophe in +which she had figured surge over her in a flood. That catastrophe +itself had saved her from one horror: but for it she would now be the +wife of Cameron Craig--a thought that made her shiver. Now she was +safe! In all that trip, fortunately, she had encountered no one she +knew. She had seen but one servant at the house and in his presence +had worn a light veil. Only Craig had known who she was! What if she +had been taken--held as a witness? How could she have explained her +presence except by the letters for whose suppression she had been ready +to give her life's happiness? As in imagination she saw her father and +herself pictured in the yellow press, the centre of gossip and +humiliating notoriety, she hugged the letters to her breast with +intensest gratitude toward the desperado who had extricated her from +the instant crisis. With what swift self-possession he had acted for +her safety! That in that lightning-like emergency he should have even +thought of the letters filled her with astonishment. Over and over +again she tried to picture his face behind the mask, as his hand had +held out the packet to her. Her senses had been shocked keenly alive +at the moment: she had even noted--as in tense crises one notes +inconsequent trifles--the ring on his finger with its curious, square +green stone. A thousand times she lost herself in wonder that a man +capable of such a deed to an unknown woman could yet be a common +burglar, one of the desperate gang whose leader was now awaiting trial, +and whose malignant face and levelled pistol haunted her. Then the +shuddering thought would roll over her that she, Echo Allen, had +witnessed the awful act of murder, and she would hide her face in her +pillow, trembling and spent. Dawn had long been whitening the windows +when the strained nerves relaxed and the body, fatigued by two +sleepless nights, found fitful rest. + +The sun had been high when she awoke and by the time she had made her +toilette and drunk a cup of coffee she had reached the little station +for which she had ostensibly started the preceding day. A rambling +hack had taken her to the home of her aunt--a recluse who had for a +dozen years regarded the outer world through the blurred medium of +semi-invalidism, absorbed in her languid reading and her flowers. On +arrival Echo had found the frail figure lying out among her roses, with +white, wild butterflies flaunting about her, stronger than she had been +for months past, and free from the querulous humours which generally +held her. So keen was her delight in her betterment that Echo had +found it easy to accomplish her own departure after luncheon, though +she generally stayed the night. There was for the present, therefore, +no added absence to be accounted for, and the lapse of time might never +have to be explained. + +As she drove now from the station through the bustling, down-town +streets toward Midfields, the knowledge that her father's secret was +safe overshadowed all the pain through which she had passed. The +dreadful memory dulled in the sunshine and the sense of security buoyed +her. She would never have to tell her part in that terrible night to +any one. Not even to Harry: she could tell him that she had never +loved any one but him: that it had been misunderstanding that had +driven her to send him that unhappy note. Her father himself need +never be made aware that she knew his secret. It would be forever dead +and buried! + +She bade 'Lige stop at the post-office. At her aunt's she had wrapped +the letters in thick wrapping-paper and sealed and tied the packet, and +this she now addressed to her father, printing the words in a large, +round hand. Then she bought some stamps, affixed them at one of the +desks that lined the corridor and smudged them with ink to simulate a +postmark. Once at home it would be easy to slip the parcel among his +evening mail. He would believe that Craig had relented of his purpose, +would destroy the letters, and the danger would be gone forever! + +Lastly, standing in the thronging thoroughfare, at the same dusty +little desk, on a sheet of paper which she bought at the stamp-window, +she wrote to Harry Sevier: + + +Forget the note I sent you yesterday. Count that it was never written, +that everything--everything!--is as it was when we sat on the porch +together the day before. I can't write the rest--but come to me +to-night, and I will tell you. + +ECHO. + + +She sealed and addressed this--as an afterthought, marking it +_urgent_--and went out to the carriage. A few minutes later the horses +drew up again, this time before the populous office-building that held +Harry's offices. + +She climbed the stair slowly, her heart hammering. She intended to +hand the note to his clerk. If Harry had gone home, it would be sent +to him there. On the landing she stopped, her breath coming quickly. +The mahogany door was open and she could see a little way into the +outer office. If she came face to face with him, what should she say? + +But no sound of voices, no rustle of paper or scratch of pen, came to +her. She went nearer--the place was empty. She took a hesitant step +or two into the room. The door of the inner office was open--that was +empty too, and its big desk closed. Harry was not there, but the +clerk, at least, should not be far off, as the door had stood wide. +She went closer and peered into the inner office. Facing her from the +wall was a small cabinet, its door, from which splinters of opaque +glass were scattered about the rugs, smashed through as if by a heavy +blow. Beneath it, on the desk-top, was a black bottle and a stained +glass, tipped on its side. + +All at once she started. She had caught sight of something that lay in +the fire-place. She went and picked it up: it was a picture of +herself--one she had never known Harry possessed--a photograph of her +portrait that had been hung in a certain spring salon in Paris. It had +been framed in silver, but frame and picture had been broken across, +savagely torn and twisted into a remnant of metal and cardboard. + +She dropped the defaced thing with a little cry and caught a hand to +her breast. What must he have been thinking in that moment of ruthless +destruction? It had been after he had read her note to him! Her +cheeks flamed. Did he now despise her for what he had thought her +flippancy, or hate her for having taken his love only to throw it away +like an old glove? As she looked again at the riven cabinet and the +bottle on the desk, a shiver of dread seized her. From the silent +symbols there stood forth outlines that frightened her. + +She went slowly out to the hall, the letter she had intended to leave +crushed up in her hand. At the top of the stair stood a tall window +and she halted in its embrasure and leaned against the sill, hearing +dully the muffled clack of the street and trying to see a mental way +through the confusing conjectures that were leaping, like lurking +beasts of prey, upon her. As she stood there voices sounded behind +her, coming from the other end of the hall--the clerk was returning +with a comrade: + +"'No,' says he. 'Don't know _when_ I'll come back.' Thought he looked +a bit off coloured, too. Told me to close up the office till I heard +from him, and not to forward anything. Rum go, eh?" + +"Seems like mighty poor business," ventured the other. + +The clerk sniffed. "Business!" he exclaimed. "Much Sevier cares about +that! A man with a brain like his and a silver tongue to boot doesn't +need business! But after that speech of his the other day I should +think he'd sit tight as wax to those Civic Club people. They're going +to make a real campaign of it and he could get on the ticket sure. +It'd be a _cinch_! Why he wants to light out abroad somewhere beats +_me_! Well, _I_ don't care how long he stays. I'm going to shut up +the shebang to-night and put in some good licks for my law-examination." + +They entered the office and the door closed upon their voices. + +Echo stood motionless, looking down into the street. Harry had gone +away! He had gone with despair and anger, or worse than anger, against +her in his heart leaving behind him only that mangled portrait and that +ominous bottle on the desk! Where had he gone, and when should she see +him again? + +Just across the way a knot of people was gathering in front of a +newspaper bulletin-board whereon a great white sheet was being pasted, +and her gaze--first mechanically, then with a start of shrinking +comprehension--read the staring headlines that had been roughly +lettered upon it: + + + CAMERON CRAIG SHOT DOWN BY BURGLAR + + DESPERATE MIDNIGHT ENCOUNTER IN FINANCIER'S LIBRARY + + WOUNDED MAN UNCONSCIOUS BUT STILL ALIVE + + MYSTERIOUS WOMAN INVOLVED + + +Cameron Craig was not dead! If he lived, he must one day learn that +the letters were gone from the safe. Would he not then connect her +with their disappearance? What would he do? She was aware, unhappily, +to what lengths he was capable of going! Even though the letters were +not his, would he accuse her of stealing them--_her_? + +As she drove away the last two lines seemed to imprint themselves on +her eyeballs in monstrous symbols of flame. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + +THE WOMAN WHO KNEW + +June came with its gold-born days, its passionate bird-songs and scents +of roses, its shimmer of willow and pine and burnished lustre of +down-bent holly-leaves and its evening mists wreathing the tall garden +shrubs like wedding-veils. But the beauty and passion of the throbbing +season came to Echo with a sense of mockery. + +The night of her return she had carried out her plan as regarded the +letters and her father had believed the package had arrived with his +mail. When a little later he had told her that Cameron Craig had sent +him the letter whose publication had been threatened, years had seemed +fallen from his shoulders. She had been content that he should deem +the act significant of the other's better nature emerging from the +slough of an ignoble temptation--satisfied to know that in his mind the +fact that it should have been one of the last acts Craig had performed +before the tragedy, had invested it with a quality of the fateful and +foreordained. Her own thought was absorbed with other things. + +She had read avidly, though with unspeakable dread and loathing, the +newspaper accounts of the affair. The refusal of the arrested man to +tell his name or where he came from, or to explain in the slightest +detail--except brazenly to deny any part in it--the crime which had set +the city in which it had occurred agog, had been duly chronicled; but +the condition of the victim--since Cameron Craig was a power in the +community--had absorbed a greater part of the popular interest, and the +daily bulletins of his physicians had called forth far more comment +than the unknown criminal whom he had identified as the man who had +shot him. She had felt a great relief, also, in the knowledge that +Craig had declared that he had not known his feminine visitor; and +while the dread had inevitably lifted that when he discovered the loss +of the letters he might betray her, it had faded at length in the +certainty that, though he lived, the brain-injury had left him with +clouded consciousness. Day after day he had lain voiceless, the outer +injury gradually and surely yielding to the medicaments of healing, but +the brain lapsed into a semblance of vacuity, inert and unresponsive, a +mild phantom of the old Craig, the bodily functions become mere +mechanism, the mind blank and fallow, its inner hurt waiting a +diagnosis beyond the skill of local practitioners. + +But though the secret Echo carried shut within her breast thus grew +less painful with the passage of time, another dread was slowly drawing +out of her heart its warmth and glow. This was the deeper hurt of +Harry Sevier's absence. + +Going about her daily affairs she thought of him without ceasing. She +never drove through the streets that her gaze did not search the busy +pavements--never passed the building that held his office that her eyes +did not lift fearfully to its blank and blinded windows--never heard +the postman's brisk step on the porch that her heart did not beat +chokingly. Where had he gone? Chilly knew of no one who had received +a letter from him. Aunt Judy, his cook, was as ignorant as she. She +had even interviewed Suzuki, but it had been plain that the Japanese +could tell nothing. + +The recollection of the bottle and the overturned glass she had seen in +his office recurred to her again and again, with all their bitter +suggestions of surrender, relapse and demoralisation. Could it be that +he had thrown away his hard-earned victory, hurled himself again into +the pit from which he had so painfully climbed, which now might hold +him forever? And coupled with this sickening thought came the +reflection: what if Harry should die, far away somewhere, perhaps in +some foreign country, without seeing her again, without ever knowing? +There were hours, too, when, woman-like, she wondered whether he had +cared so much: whether he had not found comfort in absence and given +his love elsewhere. + +Her cheeks grew paler day by day, and in spite of herself her step +lagged and lassitude grew upon her. Often she felt her father's +anxious look and knew that her mother, in her stately and +undemonstrative way was deeply disturbed. She took without protest the +tonics Doctor Southall prescribed, but they brought little betterment, +and, as physicians will, he at length began to talk of a sea-trip. In +her growing apathy plans of this sort meant nothing to Echo, but she +believed Harry had gone abroad, and the chance that they might meet, +however slender it might be, called to her. When Mrs. Spottiswoode, +therefore, announced her annual migration to Paris for her winter's +wardrobe, it was arranged that Echo should make the voyage under her +chaperonage. + +Meanwhile the date had arrived for Echo's usual summer's visit to Nancy +Langham in the neighbouring capital. Ordinarily a stay at the home of +the girl of whom she was so fond, would have been something to look +forward to with unmixed delight. Now, however, it had become a thing +to shrink from. To walk those streets--perhaps to see again the house +whose very memory had been such an anguish to her--she would gladly +have evaded this. But when Nancy's letters promised to pass from +pleading to epistolary tears, she at length yielded and late August +found her the Langhams' guest for a final weekend. + + +As she dressed, on the afternoon of her arrival, there was a tap at the +door and Nancy's voice said, "May I come in, dear? I want to see what +you are going to wear." + +"Yes, come in. I'm almost ready." + +Echo had chosen a gown of black _tulle_ with a gold rose at the +brocaded girdle and Nancy looked at her admiringly. "Gracious!" she +exclaimed. "That black--it positively sets your hair on _fire_! It +makes you so pale, though. Do put a little dab of pink on your cheeks, +Echo; you make me look positively lurid beside you!" + +There was some truth in the comparison, for the younger girl was like a +wild-rose, quivering with life and colour. She took the hare's-foot +and came to Echo coaxingly. "Just a little tinge ... like that. +There! Now you are just perfect." + +"Who's coming to tea, Nancy?" + +"Oh, only a handful--Mrs. Moncure. You met her last year--and Mr. +Meredith: he's the District Attorney--and the Shirley boys: they're +very young and College-y--and five or six others. I only asked a few." + +The Shirleys were first to appear and were followed by Mrs. Moncure, a +mellow, winy woman with a white gown that smacked of the _Rue de la +Paix_, and a complexion exquisitely made up. She greeted Nancy with a +smiling graciousness, nodded to the gentlemen, and sat down on the sofa +beside Echo. + +"It was so sweet of Nancy to ask me to come," she said. "I've never +had half a chance to chat with you before, though we met last year at a +particularly stupid reception or something. This is so much more +home-y, isn't it?" She dropped into smalltalk, rippling and charming, +while Nancy poured the tea, and when Mr. Meredith presently arrived she +presented him. + +"Our District Attorney," she announced. "The Terror of the Lawless!" + +"Now don't tell me I look a terror!" said he, beseechingly to Echo. +"I'm a most mild-mannered man in private life, am I not, Mrs. Moncure?" + +"I'm not sure yet whether I can give you a character," she answered. +"I haven't seen this year's subscription-list to my pet charity." + +"Blackmail!" the other asserted indignantly. "I'll subpoena you all as +witnesses. And this is how I am treated for protecting you from +criminality!" + +"I like _that_!" exclaimed Nancy wickedly. "When burglars hide in our +alcoves and jump out and shoot us when we're not looking! Poor Mr. +Craig! _I_ think you ought to be impeached, or impounded, or whatever +they call it." + +He laughed. "You know of the Craig affair, of course, Miss Allen," he +said, turning. + +Echo was glad for the touch of rouge on her cheeks. "Yes," she +answered. "Oh, yes." Her gaze was on the basket of tulips on the +tea-table, but she was really seeing Craig's smouldering black +eyes--the lowering brows--the ruthless clamped lips--as she had seen +his face in that moment of revealment in his study. + +"The trial of the man who shot him opened to-day," continued Meredith. +He looked again at Nancy. "It's up to the police to prevent +burglaries, you see. My part comes after the burglars are caught. I +point the moral--as a deterrent to others still at large." + +"I hope, then," said Mrs. Moncure, "that the moral will be well pointed +in this case. I didn't sleep for a week after it happened." + +"I shall certainly try to get him the limit," declared the attorney. +"It'll be a long time before you need fear another midnight call from +him, Miss Langham. While you are at the matinée to-morrow, please +remember that I am vociferating frantically at the jury in your behalf. +I surely deserve a cup of tea for that, don't I?" + +"Well, on consideration, perhaps you do," asserted Nancy judicially, as +she poured. "I'll relent." + +She sat smiling, her dainty hand on the old silver urn, not observing +how the smile had been stricken from Echo's face. Meredith noted the +latter's strained look, however, and said, as he seated himself, "You +mustn't think we are prone to such melodramatics. We don't have them +often. This case is somewhat peculiar from the fact that the police +can't identify the man we are trying. We don't know who he is or what +is his record. For of course he has one." + +"But," interposed Mrs. Moncure, "I thought criminals were always +photographed--don't they call it the 'Rogues' Gallery'?--and measured, +so they _could_ be identified." + +"My dear lady," he replied, "for two years I've been trying to bring +this city up to date in that very thing. The state has the Bertillon +system, but it's in use only in the penitentiary, as a permanent +record. The data, however, should be taken when a criminal is +arrested, and there ought to be a system of exchange of these records +with all penal institutions. There would be no temptation then to turn +a bare-faced burglary, coupled with felonious assault, into a romantic +mystery, as this man's counsel, my friend, Mason, judging from the line +he took to-day, will try to do." + +There was a pause, as he possessed himself of another scone. + +"I wonder," said Mrs. Moncure, presently, "if we shall ever know who +she was--the woman who was with Craig when he was shot." + +Meredith laughed a little. "I imagine it's not likely," he returned. +"He has declared once that he didn't know her, and we can all +understand her own passionate reticence on the subject!" + +Mrs. Moncure smiled as she rose. + + "Oh Sin! Oh Sorrow! and Oh Womankind! (she quoted) + How can you do such things and keep your fame, + Unless this world, and t'other too, be blind? + Nothing so dear as an unfilched good name!" + + +For Echo the smiling words were barbed and winged with a painful +significance. Again and again, as she chatted mechanically over the +tea-cups, they came back to her, coupled with the memory of the stories +she had heard of Craig--the whispered allusions made with shrugs and +lifted eye-brows. + +As she lay in bed that night, she felt her hot cheeks flush through the +darkness. Could the world think that of her--if it knew? + + + + +CHAPTER XXV + +ON TRIAL + +The painful suggestions that had come to Echo over the teacups +possessed her next day, when she drove with Nancy in the morning and in +the afternoon, alone, selected her final steamer purchases--for she had +made her farewells at home and was to go next day directly to New York, +meeting Mrs. Spottiswoode on board the steamer. She was restless and +uneasy and the thought of the trial proceeding at the court-house that +day obsessed her. Here she was, she, Echo Allen, save for the escaped +marauders themselves, the only one who had witnessed the deed whose +imagined details the law was now laboriously reconstructing only a +block away. + +The thought brought a burning self-consciousness which began to be +threaded by a fearful curiosity. She was feeling the repellent +fascination that the scene of a hazardous episode ever after possesses +for the secret actor in it. + +Instinctively the lode-stone had drawn her steps to Court House Square. +She looked across at the broad, open doorway. Why not go in? She had +attended trials at home. She could find a place in the rear where she +would be unobserved. For an instant the thought crossed her mind that +the prisoner might recognise her, but then she remembered that on that +night at Craig's house she had worn a light veil. + +She crossed the square quickly, and with sudden decision went up the +steps and into the building. An usher sat on a stool by a door that +stood ajar and before she knew it he had pushed it open and she found +herself in the court-room. + + +In that room, unguessed by all who had watched and listened during the +dragging trial that was now rushing swiftly to end, weird forces had +been contending. In touch with the old, familiar things, but with a +high-coloured unnaturalness, Harry Sevier had stood ceaseless guard +over his secret, every sense and instinct on the _qui vive_ to minimise +the chances of recognition. + +The night of his arrest, as he lay sleepless in his police-cell, he had +thought out certain obvious details of the game he intended to play and +had lost no time in putting them into practice. He had worn his waving +hair, rather long; during his detention he reversed this habit and +instead of its customary parting, brushed it straight back from his +forehead. Later he took stock of personal mannerisms and altered by +unrelaxing watchfulness and determination the natural register of his +voice. Always his mind had retained the sense of fate that had come to +him when he sat in the alcove with Paddy the Brick's pistol clapped to +his temple. Drink had driven him to that strange journey that had +ended in tragedy, but had it not been, nevertheless, some over-ruling +design that had brought him to Craig's house, where the unbelievable +accident of his presence had saved Echo? But for that, she would now +be Craig's wife, or the centre of a wretched scandal. If he held his +course, and played his cards as they fell, perhaps fate would guide him +still! So far the gipsy ring had brought him luck, he thought +whimsically, and he had kept it on his finger. + +But withal, it had been a straining interval. There had been, first, +the fear that Craig would die, casting its grisly shadow across the +floor; and this had woven with the dread, that never lessened, of the +moment when he should recover consciousness. The first morning's +newspapers had made a feature of Craig's assertion that he did not know +the woman who had awaited his coming in his library; but Harry held in +his mind the certainty that his own recognition must inevitably result +in Echo's involvement. + +He had adopted his course of silence because it was the only one open +to him at the moment, but the event had justified his choice. It was +the unexpected that had happened. The time-limit of the law which +bounds murder had passed, and Craig was still alive. Nor had he +recovered consciousness. But even with these assurances, Harry had had +hourly to fight with the dread of some accidental confrontation which +should pierce the screen and this dread had infinitely increased with +the opening of the trial, when he became perforce the cynosure of +hundreds of curious eyes. + +But here also fate had been kind. It was now the second day of the +proceedings, for Harry's personal qualities, no less than his strange +pertinacity, had roused a keen professional interest in the attorney +who had been assigned to defend him, and the latter had made a fight +which his client, whose legal experience judged the outcome certain, +would gladly have exchanged for the inept blunderings of the veriest +tyro. + +However, no chance encounter had betrayed him and as the District +Attorney rose for his final clinching of the nail of evidence, Harry +had felt a great relief that the ordeal was so nearly finished. + +Almost the great danger was past! With his conviction and the passing +of sentence upon him, the Judicial arm of the law would have delivered +him to the Executive. Danger of publicity would be over, and Echo +might be told the truth, without danger of recoil upon herself. A +thousand times in his cell he had wondered how he should accomplish +this. In some way it could be brought about--some safe and secret +way--just how he would have leisure to decide. No one, not even Mason, +his counsel, need be trusted with the significant secret that had such +power to blast. She must be well instructed so that no false step +could mar his plan. She must take no one into her confidence--must +tell her story privately to the Governor, who had known her from her +childhood. He was a just and discreet man and Harry did not doubt the +outcome. His own story could supplement hers, and after a sufficient +interval, executive pardon would quietly release him. He could step +back into his old niche, and all would be as before. Even if Craig +recovered, he would be powerless, since an accusation could not lie +against a pardoned man, and Craig would not bring a charge that was at +once bootless and incredible. Nor would he wreak an empty revenge upon +Echo. He had once declared that he had not known the woman in the +library, and, since she was lost to him in any case, he would not +hazard a public reversal of his testimony that all would unite to call +dastardly. The one thing Craig valued which men in the mass could give +him, aside from power and money, was his place in the social sun, and +he would not risk this. In the publication of the letter, or letters, +that would have involved her father, he doubtless would not have been +publicly known; in this matter he would run the gauntlet of popular +southern opinion and would be well aware that the act would damn him. +So Harry told himself. The real story would be buried, and the +world--his world and Echo's--would never know! + +Thus he was thinking as he listened dully to the prosecutor's scathing +_résumé_. His elbow was on the long table by which he sat, his brow in +his hand, shielding his eyes from the sunlight that sent darting arrows +across the cool, dim room as the windowshade waved in the light breeze. +He could not see the door at the rear of the room swing open, nor the +figure of the woman who entered--to pause, momentarily confused in the +quick transition from the sunny Square to the shadow of the interior. + +Echo's heart was beating hard as she slipped into a vacant seat next +the aisle, conscious that the man who was speaking was Meredith, whom +she had met at tea the day before, and that he was closing his final +speech for the prosecution. She looked about her, at the jury who +seemed apathetic and a trifle bored, at the Judge who was writing +perfunctorily on the pad before him, and then her gaze slipped, +half-stealthily, to the long table before the bar, where the prisoner +should be sitting. But though she leaned forward to look, she could +not see him for the intervening figures. Then, suddenly, the +deliberate, judicial utterance of the District Attorney caught her +attention. He was rounding to a final period and the meaning of what +he was saying smote through her self-command to the last, inner corner +of her shrinking consciousness and made the room whirl about her: + +"The counsel for the defence has attempted to read a romantic meaning +into the obduracy with which this thief and would-be murderer has held +to his policy of silence. He has invited you to believe that this +silence indicates a noble desire to shield a woman's reputation. The +name of a woman who thrusts herself, unexpected and unattended, into a +man's house at dead of night! The name of a woman the innocence of +whose errand is effectually denied by her precipitate flight and her +craven hiding!" + +Echo sank back into her seat, breathless. She listened to the brief, +conventional charge, saw the jurors file out, heard the stir and +movement of relaxation sweep over the room, yet she was unconscious of +the lapse of time. The public, open declaration had seemed to set the +final flaming seal upon the incident, voicing, as if with a monster +siren, the shameful meaning! She had cringed at Mrs. Moncure's smiling +innuendo; now the scathing indictment was burning itself on her brain. +"_A woman who thrusts herself unexpected and unattended into a man's +house at dead of night!_"--the words seemed to stab her over and over +like poisoned daggers. She was that--that woman! She imagined herself +rising in that suffocating room and saying distinctly, "It is I he said +that of--I, Echo Allen!" She saw herself on the witness-stand, heckled +and badgered, faltering an unbelievable story to sceptical ears. There +was rolling over her an overwhelming dread, and her hands had clenched +till the nails struck purple crescents into her palms. + +She became aware suddenly that the room had hushed, the jury was +re-entering. She hardly heard the foreman's crisp "Guilty, your +Honour!" She was trembling, there was a scent in her nostrils like the +fumes of poppies, and the room seemed to be swaying to and fro. She +turned away her head, daring to look no longer. + +"Prisoner at the bar, stand up!"--the clerk's metallic admonition +seemed to come from far away. She strove to look now, but a swimming +dizziness was upon her and the shadows of the room were turning black. +She had never fainted in her life, and the thought of fainting now +filled her with terror. She rose to her feet, fighting back the +sickness with all her strength, stepped into the aisle, and in a moment +more the fresh outer air, sweet and reviving, struck her quivering face. + +Her going had made no stir, had been unnoted, perhaps, by a dozen in +the court-room. She could not guess that in the instant she had risen, +with blank eyes and unsteady feet, the prisoner at the bar had +half-turned and for a breath his gaze had fastened upon her face. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI + +THE HAUNTER OF THE SHADOW + +But for the iron control to which he had schooled himself, Sevier, in +that second, must have made a panic movement of betrayal. He dragged +his eyes away instantly, his heart beating as if it must burst, as the +deliberate judicial accents struck across the courtroom: + +"I have no desire to say anything to add to your anxiety of mind. The +rulings of the court, if they have had any bias, have not leaned to the +side of the Commonwealth. There is no legal right that has not been +afforded you and if you have not chosen to meet the evidence with +candour it is to be presumed that it is because candour could have lent +no degree of mitigation to the circumstances. The jury has found you +guilty as charged, and I should be doing less than my duty, if I +allowed sympathy based upon imagined facts to subtract from the full +legal penalty. The judgment of this court is, therefore, that you be +imprisoned in the state's penitentiary during a period of twenty years." + +Harry hardly heard the pronouncement for the mental confusion that held +him. Echo knew! All the time while he had been fighting back +recognition, she had known! How had she guessed? Had his voice, +perhaps, that night when he had saved her, betrayed him? He remembered +her white and agonised look when he had thrust her from the door of +Craig's house and bade her run. A doubt, coupled with his absence from +home, would have driven her, somehow or other, to discover the truth. +She had been near him often, perhaps, realising the situation, +conscious of what he had been striving for, knowing that only silence +for a time could save them both! In that instant's view he had seen +the look of suffering and sickness in her face. In these long +weeks--if, indeed, she had known it so long--what an anguish of anxiety +she must have been enduring! + +As the voice ceased and he sat down, through the warm wave that was +coursing over him, Harry felt a chilling realisation of the risk she +had run in coming there. An impulsive word, an indiscreet look, and +suspicion might have been roused leading to discovery. Sitting before +this bar he was only an unknown criminal, a submerged "John Doe" on +whom the make-shift expediency of the law spent itself. But the veil +once lifted, he would be Harry Sevier, club-man and lawyer whose +pleading folk had once flocked to hear, now caught in the vise of the +law and proven thief and degenerate. + +In the emptying room he felt the cool hand of his counsel touch his +own, and followed him--with a watchful deputy-sheriff now in +hand-reach--to a side door that opened into a chamber at the rear of +the court-room. On the threshold the lawyer turned to the sheriff. + +"There's no hurry, Jerry," he said peevishly. "You wait out here a few +minutes. The old man himself is coming. He wants to see him." + +"Mr. Mason," said Sevier as the other closed the door. "I shall not +pretend to thank you for your interest and kindness." + +The man of briefs shrugged his shoulders. "There's nothing to thank me +for," he answered briskly. "Now, if I had cleared you--" + +Harry nodded. "Naturally, you couldn't do that. You were at a +disadvantage." + +"Thanks to you!" + +"Yes, I didn't assist you much, I know." + +"Didn't help me at all," came back in a growl. + +"No doubt you think I might have," said Harry. "But please don't count +me unresponsive. It is only that the logic of the situation appealed +to me as unanswerable. But it is a privilege," he added, with the +glimmer of a smile, "to have been associated with you." + +Mason looked at him with a twist to his saturnine lips. "You have been +my most remarkable client," he said. "It would have pleased me to have +gotten you off. But unluckily for you, I'm no Harry Sevier." + +It was fortunate that the face of the man beside him was turned away, +or he might have seen it go white and startled. "I'm sure I lost no +chance I might have had," said the other slowly, "even though you're +not Harry Sevier, whoever he is." + +The other laughed shortly. "He's a lawyer in the next state. I heard +him plead once. _He_ didn't bother with evidence! He'd clear Judas +Iscariot with that silver tongue of his! Ah, well..." He shrugged his +shoulders again, and turned to a closed door. "I'll see if the old man +is ready." + +"One moment." Harry had drawn the ring with the square uncut emerald +from his finger, and now he held it out. "I should consider it a +favour, if you would take this--it has no particular value, I am sorry +to say--as a little remembrance." + +Mason turned the ring over in his hands. Under the churlish pose a +guilty flush stole up his lean, eccentric face that betrayed +unmistakably the friendliness and liking he had learned for the man +whose plight angered and whose attitude puzzled him. "Thank you!" he +said, and a sudden smile made the grim demeanour all at once soft and +human. He slipped it on his finger. "Thank you! I shall be proud to +keep it." + +He opened the door and Sevier followed him into the room adjoining. + +There, looking out of the window, the fingers of one thin hand in his +plenteous blue-grey beard, the other behind him, stood the Governor of +the State. Harry felt a thrill run through him. He knew the older man +by sight, for they had met once casually in the past. Had Echo already +spoken? Did the other know? + +"Governor," said the lawyer, "I beg to present my client, whose cause I +have so poorly represented." + +In the deep grey, kindly eyes that were studying him attentively, Harry +saw instantly, however, that there was no hidden knowledge, and his +heart, that had leaped quickly, dropped into measured beating. He +bowed. + +"My counsel did wonders," he said, "but the day of miracles is past." + +The reply was simple enough, but the visitor unconsciously looked his +surprise. He had been prepared for something in a way unusual, for +Mason had employed his intimacy to inspire something of his own keen +interest in his client. Face to face with the latter, the Governor +understood the lawyer's puzzlement. Here was a man who had been +arrested as a house-breaker and who, caught in the very act, had shot a +man down. Yet he found it suddenly credible, as Mason had declared, +that the man was no ordinary burglar, was indeed, or had been, a +gentleman. But there were gentlemen-thieves! He met Harry's tone with +noncommittal courtesy. + +"You will not consider this an intrusion, I hope," he said. "My friend +here was anxious that I should see you. He has been deeply concerned +in your case." + +"It is a pleasure," Harry replied simply. "He has been put to +considerable pains, in which there is very little credit, I am afraid." + +"His interest," the Governor went on, "as he has assured me, arises +from a conviction that there is some hidden element in the affair that, +if it had been brought out, might have put a different face upon it." + +Harry bowed but did not answer. + +"You have a good reason, I take it, for maintaining the silence as to +yourself which my friend here finds so difficult?" + +"The very best," said Harry grimly. + +The Governor mused a moment. "You will pardon me, I am sure, if I ask +you one other question. Have you ever been in prison?" + +"No," said Harry. + +"Have you committed crime--in the past?" + +"As the law counts it, no." + +He looked the Governor steadily in the eyes as he spoke and the other, +a keen judge of men, with a knowledge, bred of long life and +observation, of the workings of the human conscience, felt a strange +inclination to believe. Yet for every criminal there must be a first +crime. Given a good family name and the remnant of a conscience, the +man's insistence could be accounted for! With a little sigh he turned +to Mason. + +"Shall I see you at the Castlemans to-night?" he asked as they shook +hands. + +"I'm dining at the Langhams," Mason replied. "It's a farewell dinner +for Miss Allen." + +"A charming girl, Echo!" said the Governor. "I've known her since she +was a child. A farewell, did you say? Is her visit over?" + +"Yes, she's off to Europe to-morrow." + +The lawyer went with the Governor to the door and stood a moment +looking after him as he crossed the lawn to his carriage. He did not +see the look that had suddenly slipped to the face of the man standing +behind him--a look mingled of sudden wonder and questioning disquiet. + +To Europe! Echo? Was she going away now ... knowing it all ... +knowing what he had passed through, what lay before him? Going without +written word or secret sign to him? + +Harry felt a strange sinking of the heart. It seemed to him as if a +cold shadow had suddenly fallen across the room--a shadow in which +lurked something vague and formless, something whose existence his +faith denied, yet which stood silently staring at him with a cruel and +terrifying smile. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII + +THE END OF THE JOURNEY + +Some miles beyond the skirt of the city, on the dusty highway, stood a +vast wall of stone built four-square, along whose top, seen +breast-high, men in dingy _khaki_ patrolled back and forth with rifles +on their shoulders. Fronting the road was a great barred gate, with an +arched top, set in the wall. This opened on a narrow paved court at +one side of which was a two storied frame building, whose door was +marked with the word "warden." + +Before this door the next afternoon Harry Sevier stood with a sheriff. +The latter knocked and a heavy-featured man came out. "Well, Warden," +said the sheriff, "I've brought you another boarder. Here's his +papers." + +The other examined the documents, took a fountain-pen from his pocket +and signed one--a form of receipt--and handed it back. "All right," he +said briefly, and rushing open the door, motioned the new arrival to +enter. + +When Harry emerged, an hour later, under the care of a uniformed +turn-key, he wore trousers and jacket of coarse fulled cloth with +horizontal stripes of black and yellowish-grey--the badge of the +convict. Under his visored cap his crisp black hair had been clipped +close to the skin. And in the upper office a trusty who acted as clerk +was filling in on an indexed card the physical measurements which, with +the number he wore on a leathern strap about his upper arm, constituted +the formula by which hereafter was to be known the man who had once +been Harry Sevier. + +In the centre of the great walled space reared an ancient circular +structure of brick. It was like a huge bee-hive. His conductor led +Harry to a compartment on the lower tier and unlocked an iron door. +"This is yours, 239," he said. + +Harry entered. He heard the door clang behind him and the footsteps +retire down the stone corridor. The light from a barred window struck +full into his eyes and for a moment he did not see that another figure, +in the same dingy stripes, sat on the edge of the narrow bunk, looking +at him out of small, red-rimmed eyes. + +The occupant rose slowly, thrusting a grimy hand through a shock of +sand-coloured hair, and stared hard at the newcomer. Then he uttered a +howl of evil mirth and recognition. + +"Smoke of the devil!" he shouted. "If it ain't the youngster me and +Towler had behind the portiary! Ho-ho! I saw by the papers they'd +nabbed you. And to think the geezer swore it was you that plugged him! +They didn't get me--not that time! I'd be out still if I hadn't tried +to lift a reticule on a street-car. It was my record that did it for +me then. Well, we're pals now, old horse, and we'll celebrate it +right!" + +He thrust his arm beneath the rough blanket, brought out a flask, and +uncorked it with his teeth. + +"It's the real stuff," he said. "Towler slips it to me--good old pal! +He's got one of the guards 'fixed'! Here--drink hearty!" With a +hoarse laugh he thrust it into Harry's face. + +Harry's eyes had been fixed on his with a curious intensity. In that +startling moment, as the fumes of the liquor penetrated his nostrils, a +lurid sequence had flashed to him. This man he had once betrayed by a +base surrender to appetite; now in antic irony, it was this man's crime +that had betrayed him, Harry Sevier, to the same dilemma and a like +shameful penalty. And here was dangled before him the hideous badge +and symbol of his downfall! + +He seized the wrist of the outstretched hand with a grasp like steel, +and the flask smashed against the bars of the window. Then he hurled +the other from him across the narrow cell. + +His cell-mate clung to the bunk across which he had fallen, and stared +at Harry with a look of slow malevolence. He licked his lips. + +"I'll fix you for that!" he said. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII + +THE MAN IN THE WHEELED CHAIR + +Echo sat under the Botticelli blue of a perfect afternoon on the +terrace of the Hotel Splendid in Nice. Through the hot, bright air, +set in the purple creases of the hazeless hills, she could see tinted +villas drowsing in golden gardens aflame with flowers, and below under +the dizzying sunlight beyond the long esplanade, tiny swells spilled +over the pearly beech like molten sapphire. + +The past months had been packed with new sights and sounds. There had +been the ocean passage, with all the gaiety that mill-pond weather and +a total absence of _mal de mer_ evokes, a leisurely motor trip through +the northern counties of England, shopping and theatre-going in Paris, +and then a final fortnight on the Riviera. From the first day at sea, +when the dimming shores of home had slipped away into the vaporous +distance across the swinging, grey-green heave, Echo had thrown herself +eagerly into the new experiences. It had seemed to her at first as +though she was leaving behind all her pain and problem and flying +whither the dogging ghosts could not follow. From time to time she +felt a wave of that shame that had overwhelmed her as she sat in the +court-room. When she reflected, she felt astonishment at her own +temerity--at the morbid curiosity which had impelled her to witness the +rehearsal of an episode whose very memory thrilled her with pain and +dread. But at length this, too, had faded. She had told herself that +Harry would have returned before her and that all would again be well +between them. With all her power she had striven to thrust the pain +and apprehension from the mind and amid new and varying scenes she had +partially succeeded. + +But though the acute strain and distress, the piteous terror had +dulled, her heart ached always with its burden, and there were many +times when all of Mrs. Spottiswoode's effervescent moods could not call +forth response. Across the fairest scenes the ghosts, uncalled, would +thrust themselves, and in her brain a mocking voice would whisper-- + +"You will never tell him! You will never dare! There will always be a +secret between you! You will be deceiving him--all your life. For if +you told him the truth--the whole truth--would he believe you? The +letters for which you made that visit, even if you could show them, are +ashes now. And even if he believed in the necessity that drove you to +win them from Craig, what might he imagine had been the price! You +know what the world would think: you heard it in the court-room. He +would think the same thing! You were in Craig's house, alone, that +midnight--and you will never dare tell him! Can you say to him, 'It +was _I_ who was in Cameron Craig's library! _I_ was the mysterious +woman the police were searching for--_I_ whom you love!'?" + +The sneering voices were whispering in her ear to-night, as she sat +looking out across the blended harmonies of sky and sea, her wistful +face bent beneath the soft halo of her hair. + +There welled up in her with fresh force the aching resentment, the sick +anger and rebellion against the sardonic fate that had so enmeshed her. +Why should Craig have ever seen and desired her? Why should his fancy +not have fallen upon some other woman? Yet, had that been so, her +father's name would have been ruined! That, at least, had not +befallen. If only she had not written that note to Harry! So she +reflected, not knowing that that fateful note itself had been the key +to another series of incidents which had in fact wrought for her +salvation--so curiously interwoven is the mystic fabric that man calls +chance. By that note, she told herself, she had thrust his love from +her. Would anything less than the whole truth bring it back? And in +any case, if she did not tell him the whole, would she ever be safe in +that love? For Craig could betray her if he regained his faculties. A +single word could overwhelm her. There was that lost night when she +had been believed to be at her aunt's--a dropped stitch in time's weave +which might unravel the whole! If he recovered Craig would hold her +happiness in his grasp as surely as he had once held her father's +honour. + +The cogent reasons that had influenced Harry in his speculation on the +same subject had been based on his keen masculine observation and +familiarity with Craig's type; Echo had only her knowledge of his +relentless passion and lack of scruple, and her instinct was clouded by +long anxiety and fear. She had lately striven to banish from her mind +the idea that he might recover, but to-night it was upon her with +strange force. A baleful thought thrust itself into her mind, an +incarnate temptation: _If Craig would only die_! As it came to her she +felt her face blush, and she shrank, feeling that a wicked thing had +found lodgment in her soul; but it came again and again. + +A little group of people who had arrived that morning had issued from +the dining-room and now were seated about one of the small tables on +the terrace drinking their coffee--two men, one elderly, one younger, a +handsome woman and a girl. They continued the conversation begun +inside--evidently a discussion of some one who had been on the train. +All at once the lady touched the speaker beside her on the arm. + +"Hush!" she cautioned. "There he is now!" + +The voices stilled. Glancing around Echo saw that a wheeled-chair was +being pushed onto the far end of the terrace. A man sat in it, huddled +in a steamer-rug. + +"Is he married?" asked the lady, after a pause. + +"No," replied the elderly man. "He has no family or near relatives. +The men with him are a nurse and a secretary. They say he is very +rich." + +"Poor fellow!" she exclaimed. "What a dreadful thing! Death is +immensely preferable, of course, to life under such conditions. Where +are they taking him?" + +"To Hungary, I believe. There's a celebrated authority on +brain-surgery in Buda-Pesth. The surgeons think it's pressure on some +nerve-centre, and the case calls for the particular operation that is +this chap's specialty. It's a forlorn hope, I imagine." + +"I don't know," said the younger man, lighting a cigarette. "They do +marvellous things nowadays. And anyway, if it fails, it can't be any +worse for the patient. As it is, he has no mind at all--no speech, no +memory, nothing!" + +Echo turned her head; there was a fierce little smile on her lips. So +here was another! Had he, too, like the one of whom she had been +thinking, been overtaken by a righteous Nemesis in the moment of evil +triumph? And somewhere, perhaps, was there a woman to whom his death +would be a gladness and a relief? + +The lady looked toward the wheeled-chair. "How was the injury caused?" +she asked interestedly. + +"He was shot," said the elderly man. "Shot by a burglar. I remember +reading of it in the newspapers at the time." + +Echo started. A little tremor ran over her. The scarf she held +slipped from her hand. + +"It seems a pity sometimes," went on the voice, "that the law must +graduate its penalties so nicely. Here is a man who, to all intents +and purposes, was murdered. If he doesn't recover, his is a living +death. Yet because he continues to breathe, the most that can be given +to the scoundrel who shot him is a term of imprisonment. He ought to +have been hanged!" + +The girl beside her pushed back her chair petulantly. "Oh, let's _do_ +something!" she cried. "I want to get him out of my mind. I sat where +I had to look at him in the train all day. It's too horrible! Fancy +having to be like that, not being able to walk or talk or even to feed +one's self! I want to go to the Casino and see something _funny_!" + + +When the sound of their voices had died away in the corridor, Echo rose +from her seat and walked along the terrace, quite to the end, where +stood the wheeled-chair. On a bench near by an attendant was immersed +in a newspaper. + +Then she turned and looked at the pallid, vacuous face above the +steamer-rug. + +Yes--it was Cameron Craig. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX + +THE LONE BATTLE + +During those months Harry's visible life had been turning in an endless +cycle of new-gained habit that ruled with vicious and numbing precision +the huge conglomerate of which he was but a single atom--a bitter, +dragging treadmill in which he was constrained to tramp steadily round +and round with the hands of the clock, marking time, as it were, in a +painful void that changed with mocking reverberations. + +The spectre that had smiled its cruel smile at him from the shadow in +the little chamber back of the court-room had never left him. He had +thrust it from him with all his strength, but it had come again and +again to chuckle through the darkness. + +"She!" it had sneered. "She for whom you risked and suffered so much! +She whose fine courage you counted on--who you dreamed would rush to +your defence, at any cost to herself! You need not have been afraid. +She would have risked nothing. She cared for you--yes. But she cares +a thousand times more for her place in the world's opinion. Why, she +would have married Craig--_married_ him!--rather than face a reflected +shame from a story affecting her father. So much reputation means to +her! Here you are in your stripes, a convict, and _she knows it_! She +knew all along! She doesn't guess you saw her in the court-room: she +didn't mean you to, of course. How she must have suffered from fear +that you would drag her into it! No doubt she is afraid you may repent +and call on her now to help you. Perhaps that is why she has gone +abroad. That is the real Echo Allen! That is the woman you have +loved!" + +Should he call to her now, when she had left him to this suffering, +giving him no little word of trust or gratitude? A painful fiery pride +rose up in him. Not if his flesh was torn by red-hot pincers! Not in +endless years, though every day were a separate hell, till he died! +Never--never--never! + +Seared by pride, tortured by despair, with the black agony of doubt +clinging to him like a coat-of-mail, memory dragged him backward +through infernos of suffering, thrusting its searching fingers into +each cranny of his mind, mocking him with shifting pictures cruelly +incongruous, that like a _camera obscura_ turned and turned about a +single focus--a grey old porch with Echo's figure leaning against a +pillar and he looking up into her face. As though he had been a +separate entity he saw himself moving through a thousand significant +scenes of the flame-swept past--the long-gone, dead and buried yet +living past--with her! And across these flitting outlines there +stamped itself the forbidding legend that his ghostly guide showed +Dante.... _Lasciate Ogni speranza_! By his own choice he had opened a +bottomless chasm between the then and now, between the Harry Sevier he +had been and the nameless convict branded by the righteous law, and +this chasm was impassible and enduring. Ten years of oblivion, of +loathsome existence under a number, of comradeship with felons, an +interminable blank unlighted by one glimpse of joy! Years in which, at +home, the mystery of his disappearance would pass from a +nine-days'-wonder to a diminishing speculation, a vague curiosity, and +at length to forgetfulness. His life, with its multiple ambitions, its +hopes and strivings--its love--had been spilled like water into sand; +there remained only the useless vessel, empty and dishonoured. + +Time and again he experienced abrupt lapses into the blackest pit of +despair, when he grappled with an aching desire to be quit of the +puzzle of life, and by any one of a dozen means which lay at his hand, +to leap into freedom. But there was in him something deep-lying and +adamantine which forbade this solution. + +Meanwhile time, after a fashion, went on. He breathed, ate and slept; +he saw the dawn look in at his narrow window and the silken blue dusk +drawn across its bars; his hands automatically performed mechanical +tasks, as did the hundreds of others about him; and gradually, out of +the very iteration of these homely things grew a passive equanimity, +destitute of human comfort yet bringing with it a kind of numb +acquiescence in which, though all unconsciously, his feet were feeling +for new foot-hold on the submerged highway of life. And at length +normal feeling, though dazed and bewildered, crept again to the +surface; he was once more conscious of the sun and air, of the scent of +green growing things that the breeze now and then wafted over the +masonry, of the grey pigeons that pecked crumbs in the court-yard, and +of the multitudinous human life that throbbed about him. + +In all these months Paddy the Brick had been his cell-mate. By day in +the shop, that rumbled with the clacking din of the tireless +shoe-machines, they were separated. But they marched shoulder to +breast in the loathed lock-step, they sat side by side at dinner and +supper, and the iron bunks on which they slept--Harry on the upper +one--were but a few feet apart. During the first days, while they were +together in the cell, the other had watched him glumly and +suspiciously, speaking only when he must and then morosely, so that +Harry had wondered dully whether that whirl of rage in which he had +smashed the flask of whisky against the window-bars had not further +embittered his lot by an irreparable enmity. + +More than once, by the devious means known to such places, Paddy the +Brick had procured whisky, and this--though he risked offering no more +to his companion but drank it secretly in his bunk at night--had put +Harry through other bitter tests of self-control. For the wilful +license of the day on which he had ceased to be Harry Sevier had +granted fresh and terrible power to the cringing thing that had been +mastered and manacled, and the fight he had fought out in that long +year Harry had had again to renew, and now without the zest of reward. +Again and again, as he sat in his cell, or fed the pungent leathern +strips into the clacking shoe-machines in the shop, without warning the +demon of thirst had swooped upon him, making his dry throat ache with +uncontrollable longing, his palms tingle with itching desire: and at +times, when he awoke gasping with the reeking fumes in his nostrils, +and heard the gurgle of the liquor in the dark, he had fought with a +strenuous desire to fling himself bodily upon his companion and snatch +the drink to his own arid lips--fought till the struggle turned him +faint with anger, disgust and self-contempt. + +What lent him in these bitter months the strength for this unequal +struggle? Most of all the knowledge that the appetite which he now +grappled with in himself, was the patron Genius of that house of Pain. +He had learned it from his fellows there, in whose faces alcohol had +set its recognisable marks, its baleful brands of ownership. He knew +it from a score of dismal histories related by his incorrigible +cell-mate, daily allusions, the famished eagerness with which the +surreptitious flask was passed from hand to hand. The Spirit of Drink +had seemed to him at length to sprawl, a huge, lethargic incubus, over +that tortured congeries of crime. Till slowly, very slowly--as human +feeling had earlier come to him out of his blankness and torpor--there +had dawned in him a mute consciousness of a victory over himself that +was to be enduring. The conquest he had thought he had made in that +first year of studied avoidance had been no true one. Under stress of +anger, grief and resentment, it had fallen in shameful and utter +defeat. The real victory that he knew now, had come to him in that +prison garb, when black despair had sat by his side through long +months--the fruit of a strength born of familiar hand-touch with evil +temptation and a hatred of the tempter. + +As time went on, the surly mood of his cell-mate had grown less +difficult, had even softened to a sneering tolerance. + +"You're improving!" he said one day with a smirk. "So you're making up +to the Gospel-Sharp, eh?" + +It was a Sunday, when the shops were empty and silent, and the long +grey-black serpentine, with its hitching lock-step, had wound to the +Chapel for the weekly platitudes and then back to the clammy, wintry +dormitory, to drop its human links at their numbered cells. That day +for the first time, the plodding, oleaginous chaplain had noted the new +figure in the stolid ranks and had stopped to speak to him--a +commonplace to which Harry had responded with a mere word. + +"You'd better make up to the Warden!" Paddy the Brick continued. "He's +the cock-of-the-walk here. I'd like to smash that oily face of his!" + +"I've nothing against him," replied Harry evenly. "He does what he's +here to do." + +"He'd better keep his nose in his office," said the other darkly. +"He'll walk through the shops once too often! I know a man around the +corner who'd give his neck to 'get' him--he's a lifer, and nothing +makes much difference to him!" + +He crossed the narrow cell as he spoke, and sitting on one of the +three-legged stools that constituted the cell's only movable furniture, +took a bent tin spoon from under his jacket and began to tap upon the +wall. Harry had sometimes seen him at this occupation--a kind of crude +signalling he had thought it. Now, however, some rhythm in the sound +caught him, reminding him of the click of the keys in a telegraph +office. "What is that you are doing?" he asked, as the other stopped. + +"Doing?" Paddy the Brick turned his narrow eyes over his shoulder. +"I've been having a chat with an old pal of mine in the upper tier. +That's what." + +"Talking?" + +"Yes. It's the prison-wireless. Didn't you ever hear of that?" + +"No." + +The other rose and pulled away the blanket from the foot of his bunk. +There in the whitewashed wall was a double row of minute scratches. +"That's the alphabet," he said. "It's mighty handy--we work it by +relay. I can call up any cell on this side in fifteen minutes. Better +learn it," he added jeeringly. "You'll have plenty of time!" + +Harry's gaze turned back to the little barred window with its meagre +square of blue. The time he had been there was to be measured only by +months, yet how century-long had dragged the leaden-footed procession! +His painful reverie was broken by Paddy the Brick's voice, jarring and +malicious: + +"Ever read the Bible?" + +The other had taken the small dingy volume--the sole book the place +afforded--from its shelf, and was lying on his back on his bunk, his +eyes peering over its rim. + +"Yes," answered Harry, slowly. "Why?" + +"I've found one good thing in it: '_Woe unto you also, ye lawyers! for +ye lade men with burdens grievous to be borne._' Ho-ho!" he chuckled. +"Reckon I'll ask old Coffin-Face to preach on it next Sunday in Chapel. +I'd sure enjoy it. I had a lawyer once--_damn_ him!" + +The flare of evil passion in the closing epithet seemed to Harry like a +wicked spurt of flame from some sudden crack in cooling lava, leaping +out to sear him. His face was turned away--toward the little square of +barred window--and his voice was hoarser than usual, as he asked: + +"Why do you hate him so?" + +Paddy the Brick hurled the Bible into the corner with an imprecation. +He rose to a sitting posture, his features working. + +"Because he did it for me!" he said. "He might have cleared me ... and +he didn't try. And I never took the money they said I stole--never, so +help me! It was a put-up job. They 'planted' the stuff on me, when I +was drunk. It was a pay-day and I knew they were up to something, for +they'd sworn they'd drive me out of the logging-camp--and yet I hadn't +sense enough to keep sober!" He gave a harsh and bitter laugh, and his +voice rose. "But it was my lawyer friend that really did the business! +He was a dead swell--one of your la-de-das with money and +automobiles--that played at lawyering. They told me he was a great man +and I was fool enough to believe them. What did he care for my +case--it was a little one to him! I was nothing but a lumberjack! Why +should he soil his kid gloves with me?" + +He turned to Harry's white face a livid countenance. "So now I'm +here," he finished, "and I don't give a rip if I am, either!" + +"_Woe unto you also, ye lawyers!_" Parallel with the wholesale +indictment another text in that self-same book was flashing through +Harry's mind: "_For with what judgment ye judge ye shall be judged, and +with what measure ye mete it shall be measured to you again._" Was +that, after all, no trite generality applicable to a hypothetical +hereafter, but a thing true in the minute and multinomial affairs of +the present? Did chance, or fate--or whatever the human mind called +the great _Deus ex Machinâ_--watch somewhere, with hand upon the lever, +adjusting the nice balance to the subtle requirements of some occult +law of retribution that, though hidden, was yet as certain as +gravitation? + +As Harry saw the reddened eyes glowing with hatred, the curving +fingers, the crouching figure, he said to himself, "This is my +work--mine and whisky's. He was a simple woodman who laboured six days +of the week and on the seventh traded half his wages for 'moonshine' +from some illicit mountain still. Whisky set his feet in the toils, +yet but for me he might have lived there forever in the timber, +treading his narrow groove like a blind horse on a ferry, not one whit +worse than his fellows, with no agonised conscience, a simple product +of his environment. But I--and whisky--fastened the bonds upon him. I +did it. I sent him here. I gave him hatred of society, the warfare +that has already marked him with the mark of the beast. This is what I +did. And now I am plucked up from my place and planted here beside +him, as soiled in the eyes of the world as he! Is it because I was the +instrument of his demoralisation that the tables have now been +turned?--because he who takes the sword shall perish by the sword? And +in the last great evening-up, is it written that I shall become even as +he?--that bars and chains shall have their will of me and I emerge at +last, like this incorrigible _ruiné_, hard, debased, besotted, beyond +hope or redemption in the world?" He shuddered. Better even that that +shot in the library had gone home--that he now lay, innocent as he was, +with the red mark on his throat, down in the horrible quick-lime! + +He rose, and with his hands gripping the bars of the open door, drew a +long breath. No! whatever this pent-house did to him, it should never +drag him down! He would take his medicine. For what, in his egregious +folly and egotism, he had done, he would pay--if fate demanded, to the +uttermost farthing. But out of its prison his soul, sometime, should +come unblanched, and unabashed! + + + + +CHAPTER XXX + +THE GIPSY RING + +The chill touch of autumn was in the air when the big steamer that +brought Mrs. Spottiswoode and Echo home, crept up the bay to her wharf +in the teeming North River. They arrived at daylight and the early +morning found them safe aboard a Pullman rolling southward. + +Looking out across the filmy glory of the October fields and the woods +in their golden regalia epauletted in red, Echo thought of the day she +had sailed away. She had been wretched then, and with all the tonic of +fresh scenes and the savour of change, was she not as wretched now? +For no letter from home had chronicled Harry Sevier's return, and +moreover the knowledge that Craig had been taken half around the world +to test the greatest surgical skill the planet afforded, had made his +recovery, with all it might imply for her, an imminent possibility. + +As she followed Mrs. Spottiswoode into the dining-car for luncheon, a +lank, familiar form sprang up from a table. + +"Mr. Malcolm!" she cried, and found both her hands instantly swallowed +in a pair of big palms. + +He was an extraordinary man, this Thomas Malcolm, whom his intimates +dubbed, affectionately, "Tom." His father had begun life brilliantly, +had begun to make a name and place for himself in professional life, +when he had yielded to the vice of drinking, had speedily sunk himself +in poverty, and had died in some slum corner wretched and unredeemed, +leaving behind him a widow and a boy of ten who, with grim +determination, had set himself to earn a living for both. He had but +just begun to succeed in this when disease, its seeds sown in +privation, took his mother from him. By dint of night-work he had +gained a common-school education and had tutored himself through a +southern university. At twenty-five he had founded an obscure Mission +in the city which had known his father's disgrace, where for thirty +years he had devoted himself to work among the rum-sodden and depraved. +There was none so besotted as to be turned from his door; he was a +familiar figure in the night-court and a welcome weekly visitor at the +Penitentiary, few of whose inmates he did not know personally. At +fifty-five no man was more beloved in the community in which he +laboured, and most of all was he valued and respected by those who knew +his history, and understood how the hatred of liquor had become to the +boy a consuming fire that had driven him to this life of undeviating +self-denial and strenuous conflict with the most sordid of vices. + +Looking down at Echo from his great height, gaunt, raw-boned and with a +saturnine twinkle in his cavernous eyes, his homely sallow face +softened to a wonderful smile. "Why!" he said. "It's a monstrous time +since we've met, my dear!" and to Mrs. Spottiswoode--"I saw your names +on the passenger-list in the paper this morning, but I thought New York +would have kept you at least a week." + +"Not me!" she returned. "We took in all the new plays in London and +spent all our money in Paris. I've no ambition now above my winter +roses!" She extended her hand to Malcolm's companion. + +"How do you do, Mr. Mason? I'm beginning to think you two men are +desperate conspirators. Last year in New York I saw you both together." + +Malcolm laughed. "A misguided philanthropist once left a part of his +estate to my Mission, and Mason, here, is the legal executor. _Ferbum +sat_." + +"I hope that is Latin for 'Do sit at our table.' The car is so full, +and I never could ride backward! Thank you, so much!" She sat down +and bent her smart lorgnette upon the menu-card. "What shall we order, +Echo?" + +"Anything but the 'fried Chicken, Virginia style,'" said Mason +gloomily. "It's supposed to be what that waiter has on his tray there. +It's a crime and a swindle." + +"Don't mind Mason," interposed Malcolm. "He's a dyspeptic. When I get +to be his age--" + +"You did," said the other viciously, "five years ago." + +"--I'll be a vegetarian," finished the other. "Cheer up, Mason, and +have a potato." He turned to Echo: "I know a girl in my town who's +mighty keen to see you." + +"Nancy Langham!" + +He nodded. "She counts on having you down for Thanksgiving week. I +hope she'll succeed. I'm giving a great 'spread' down at the Mission, +and I want you girls to show me how to decorate the place. You will, +then, eh? I haven't forgotten how you and Nancy helped me out last +Christmas!" He reached over and patted her hand. "I do like to let it +soak into Poverty Terrace that I really keep company with 'dee +quality,' as the darkies say!" + +Mrs. Spottiswoode looked at him curiously. "How frivolous and selfish +we must all seem to you, who give up your life to such people!" she +said. "I've heard so much about your work, Mr. Malcolm, especially in +the prisons. I think you are wonderful. I should know how to talk to +a Martian better than to a criminal. Don't you find it hard to get +into sympathy with them?" + +His smiling face turned serious. "'A fellow-feeling makes us wondrous +kind,'" he quoted. "You remember your Bunyan? I always say to myself, +'There, but for the lack of a sufficient temptation, goes Thomas +Malcolm!' Dear Lady, there is many a man in the Penitentiary who would +be a churchwarden to-day but for bad environment and good whisky." + +"And the law's mistakes," added Mason, sardonically. He had been +turning over on his finger a ring with a square green stone, and Echo +had been wondering vaguely where she had seen such a ring before. "I +know a man who's in for ten years, and I'd stake my life he's no more +guilty than I am." + +"How extraordinary!" exclaimed Mrs. Spottiswoode, and Malcolm observed +with wicked innocence: "I wonder who could have defended him!" + +The other smiled grimly at the thrust. "Oh, he was guilty enough +according to the evidence. But he was innocent, for all of that. He +is the man who was accused of shooting Cameron Craig." + +The blood flew to Echo's face and she bent her head over her salad. +She felt as though she had strayed unwittingly into an ambush where all +the old dread and terror from which she had fled had sprung again upon +her. + +"But," said Mrs. Spottiswoode, "I thought Craig himself identified him." + +Mason sniffed. "Craig was in no condition to identify anybody. I saw +the man and talked with him, day after day, for weeks. He was no +criminal--why, his very look gave the theory the lie!" + +A keen, thriving wonder crossed Echo's thought at the blunt assertion. +That livid face back of the spitting revolver hung before her mental +sight with strange vividness--the surly, wicked lips, the low brow and +narrow eyes. How was it possible that such a countenance could assume +at wont a look of innocency that would deceive a lawyer, even against +damning evidence, into a belief that he was a victim of circumstances? + +"What is your theory of the shooting, then?" asked Mrs. Spottiswoode, +interestedly. + +The lawyer was silent a moment, drawing little circles on the cloth +with his fork. "I haven't a wholly satisfactory one," he said at +length, slowly. "But I don't believe he did it. Craig, it is certain, +had a _rendezvous_ with a woman, and the woman saw the shooting. I +believe her testimony would have proven that the man who was tried and +convicted was not the man who did it. That fact disposed of, I believe +he could have shown, if he had chosen to, that he had no connection +with the burglars, and would have been acquitted." + +"_Cherchez la femme!_" murmured the lady. + +"Yes. She would not come forward." + +Mrs. Spottiswoode looked at Malcolm. "Have you seen him?" she asked. + +"No, I've been in New Orleans for three months. But I hope to begin my +visits at the Penitentiary very soon, and I'm looking forward to +meeting him." + +"You'll agree with me, I'll bet a hat!" said Mason. "By the way"--he +held up his hand--"he gave me this ring, the day he was sentenced." + +Echo felt every nerve suddenly tighten. For it had come to her in a +flash where she had seen that ring's counterpart: it had been on the +finger of the masked burglar on that horrible midnight in Craig's +library--when he had held out to her the letters from the safe! Her +heart began to beat suffocatingly. "_Take them and go--go +instantly!_"--she seemed to hear the tense command strike across the +car. A thrill ran over her. Was the ring a kind of badge, a sign of +their guilty calling? Or could it be that the man who was being tried +was _not_ the man who had shot Craig--but the other, the one who had +saved her? + +She began to tremble, for another thought stabbed her. If this was so, +how could she honourably keep silence? The instant question touched +her conscience, her quick sense of justice and duty, with sudden +insistence. But for the spoilers themselves, she was the only witness +of that deed in the library. Craig--so narrow had been for him that +instant of observation--might have been mistaken. But not she! The +very fright and horror of the moment had indelibly fixed the shooter's +face upon her mind. Suppose Mason's hypothesis were correct--suppose +he had been no burglar, but an honourable man, caught, as she had been, +in a web of circumstance. In the crisis he had acted as a gentleman, +had thought of her before himself. Instead of flying with the others, +he had lingered to do that generous deed for her. What if it were +because of that he had been taken! If so, what a debt she owed him! + +It came to her suddenly that she must be _certain_. Never again could +she know peace of soul till she knew the truth. If the man in the +Penitentiary was indeed the man who had shot Craig, well and good. If +not... + +She turned her head, for Malcolm was speaking to her. "When you come +to Nancy's you must let me take you both out to see these _protégés_ of +mine that have to be shut up for the good of their souls. Wouldn't you +like to, eh?" + +She thought he must hear the beating of her pulse. "Would--don't they +resent being stared at?" she faltered. + +"Bless your heart!" he said, with one of his bear-like laughs. "It's +good for them. They don't get a squint at roses and sunshine every +day! A sight like you two girls will make them want to get out, and +keep them on their best behaviour, so as to earn all the commutation +good marks bring! I'll get the Warden to take us through the shops. +That's the most interesting part." + + +"I must be quite certain!" The words seemed singing themselves over in +a banal refrain that sounded through the stir and rumble of the +station, mingling with 'Lige's hearty voice of welcome, and her +father's loving greeting as he lifted her carefully from the car step. + +"You're a lot better? _Sure?_" he queried anxiously, as he held both +her hands tight in his. + +"Sure!" she smiled. "We've had a _wonderful_ time. I couldn't begin +to tell you about it in my letters. But I'm glad to be home just the +same! How are mother and Chilly? Mr. Malcolm was on the train--there +he is now, waving his hand from the window. Did the wireless tell you +we lost a propeller-blade two days out?" + +The dusk flowed over them in violet waves as they drove homeward and +she laughed and talked gaily, with her hand clasped in his under the +carriage-robe, the horses prancing and curvetting in the keen October +air. Once, at a crossing, she put out her hand and touched the +coachman's arm. + +"Take Main Street, 'Lige," she directed. "I'd like to see how it +looks." + +As he swung into the broader thoroughfare, her father said, "You're +looking at the new bank building. You see it's nearly done." + +But she was really looking beyond, at a four-storied office-front, on +whose second floor the windows of a suite showed in chaste, golden +letters the legend, "Henry Sevier, Attorney-at-Law." The windows were +blank and dusty, and their blinds were drawn. + +"Why, you're shivering!" said her father suddenly, and drew the robe +more closely about her. + +She smiled at him. + +"No," she said, "but I think I'm just a little tired. Drive faster, +'Lige. I--I want to get home." + + + + +CHAPTER XXXI + +AMBUSH + +Lying in his bunk Harry awoke to the consciousness of another bleak +dawn. The morning waking was always a pain to him, for in sleep the +barriers fell away and the mind fared forth along the free, sweet +highways of memory. He did not open his eyes at once, but he felt the +rasp of the coarse blanket at his throat, smelled the cold clamminess +of the granite floor, and realised by a thousand reminders of the +sharpened senses that another round of the treadmill awaited him. He +remembered drearily that to-morrow would be Thanksgiving Day. In the +world outside it was the time of yellow maples and the red of the +frost-kissed sumac, of wild grapes purpling in the thickets and clumps +of alder blooms in the fence-corners--of blazing hearths and good +fellowship! + +Mingling with the stir of reawakening life in the corridors there +sounded a light _tap-tap_--the tattoo of a tin spoon against the stone. + +Without moving he opened his eyes. Paddy the Brick was up and +dressed--if donning the cheap flannel shirt, the striped jacket and +trousers, might be called dressing--and, stooped in the corner of the +cell, was industriously at work with the 'prison-wireless.' For a +while Harry watched him curiously; then suddenly his ear made out a +word. For in time he had taken his cell-mate's sneering advice, and +because the busy mind, turned too long upon itself, must perforce +occupy itself with something extraneous, had mastered the code that was +scratched in the white-washed wall. He had a retentive memory, +sharpened now by disuse, and the tiny _tap-tap_ that he had learned to +distinguish through the muffling masonry, though he never used it as a +means of communication, had soon become an open book to him. Strange +things he had heard in this manner--furtive, uncouth gossip of that +under-world, which, although much was couched in an unknown _argot_ and +was meaningless to him, had yet served in a way to lighten the +unendurable emptiness. The word he had caught now was "visitors." + +In another moment Harry was listening intently, for the sounds were +spelling something which instinct told him was wickedly suggestive +though he could not guess its purport. "Warden ... to-day," tapped the +signalled code, "--take ... number nine ... machine ... your ... +chance--" + +Whatever else might have been said was blotted by the whirring clang of +the electric gong in the central corridor. Through the great +lamelliform bee-hive it sent its waking clamour, the signal for rising +to the new day's tasks. With the sound Paddy the Brick thrust the +stolen utensil out of sight and shot a stealthy glance at the upper +bunk, but its occupant had apparently just awakened. + +All the ensuing morning, as he rubbed himself down in the plenteous +cold water which the spigot provided, and did his share in the cleaning +of the bare cell--while he sopped his brown bread in the weak breakfast +coffee, and presently tramped in the long file to the shop to feed the +voracious machines with the clean-smelling leather--all the while +Harry's brain was busy with the message he had heard. "Visitors?" +Occasionally visitors had passed through the shops--panging reminders +to him of the world outside. Perhaps in some devious way the other had +heard that some would come to-day. But turn and twist the rest of the +words how he might, they meant nothing. Dinner time came, with its +lifting break in the unvarying monotony, then the long lock-step back +to the shop and its labour. + +The work had come to be far more welcome to him than the cell, with the +partner to whose society he was chained. The hum and click and throb +stole his thought, and the automatic movements, in which he had become +an adept, soothed his aching mind. For several hours this afternoon +the mechanical occupation absorbed him and he worked on, noting little +about him. Then, all at once, as he turned to pick up the bit of +cotton waste with which he kept the steel clutches of the machine +before him free from dust, he became conscious of something +unaccustomed. His own machine was number eight. At the one adjoining, +number nine, which was next to the broad middle way bisecting the shop, +Paddy the Brick was wont to stand. Now, however, another man was in +his stead. At near view Harry recognised him as one whose place was +further along, next the wall, and glancing in that direction he saw +that Paddy the Brick was running the other's machine. + +The meaning of the "wireless" message leaped instantly to his mind. +When, after dinner, the long line had broken and distributed its units, +the man had taken number nine, and the exchange had been effected so +quickly and naturally that it had been thus far unnoted by the watchful +Superintendent sitting moveless on the raised platform at the end of +the aisle, his revolvers on the desk before him. What did the transfer +mean? Harry wondered. The men nearby worked on, but they seemed to be +restive, waiting for something, with a subdued excitement and anxiety. +As he glanced sideways toward the newcomer, at the haggard parchment +visage, lean and ashen with the pallor of long confinement, he noted +that the other kept his back to the platform and his head studiously +bent over his machine, and there darted to Harry's recollection what +Paddy the Brick had said one day to him--of the "lifer" and his hatred +of the warden. The tapped message of the morning had spoken of the +latter, too. "Your ... chance!" Could that have meant the chance to +"get" the man he hated? + +As if in answer to the startled thought, there sounded voices behind +him. He looked over his shoulder. The Warden himself was entering the +door at the end of the shop, and there were visitors with him. + +Then instantly every conscious thought save one fled from him and he +clapped a hand to his mouth to stifle a cry. With the Warden were +three figures, a man and two women, and the women were Echo Allen and +Nancy Langham. + +A sickness like that of death rushed upon him. That she could come +there--careless of the chance that she might see him in these loathsome +surroundings--a common convict, with cropped hair and striped clothing, +marked with all the badges of the jailbird--smote him with an +unendurable pain. She, who knew that he had loved her--to see him in +this guise! All the agony he had suffered rolled over him anew, +intensified a thousand-fold. He pulled his cap-visor low over his eyes +and snatching up the bit of oily waste, drew it across his cheek, +smudging his face from chin to brow. + +The little group of four had paused near the desk of the +Superintendent, the Warden smilingly pointing out to the two girls the +details of the work. Harry's fingers performed their task by sheer +instinct; for his very life he had not been able to help stealing a +swift sidelong look at Echo's face, pale beneath its russet cloud of +hair, and he distinguished with a fierce bitterness the jaded shadows +that had crept beneath her eyes, tokens that belied her conventionally +polite show of interest. So, though she condemned him to this torture, +she too suffered! + +Could he have looked beneath that controlled exterior he would have +discerned a pain and dread to match his own. With that luncheon in the +dining-car a sense of fate had fallen upon her, heavy and irrevocable, +as though some huge weight was closing down. The whip of conscience +had driven her to this day's quest. If the law had erred--if, in truth +an innocent man, as Mason believed, lay under condemnation--it was for +lack of her testimony: the thought had laid upon her sensitive mind a +new sense of guilty responsibility. She must be certain, beyond +peradventure. The visit to the Evelands for the Thanksgiving season +had furnished the opportunity and the round of the Penitentiary with +Malcolm had arranged itself. It had been easy to advert to Mason's +belief in the innocence of the prisoner he had defended, and it had +seemed natural enough for her to ask the Warden to point out the man as +they went through the shops. They had now entered the room in which he +had told her the man worked--she was standing on the threshold of the +knowledge she feared. + +She started at the Warden's voice, close to her ear, above the rasping +clamour of the machines: "The last row, at the end. The middle +machine--that's the one." + +With a quick intake of her breath she looked where he pointed. The +colour faded from her cheeks. Doubt--if she had clung to doubt--was +ended now! The man who had started with levelled pistol from behind +the curtain of Craig's library had been short and stocky and +round-shouldered. The side-face of the distant prisoner at whom she +was now looking with such painful intensity, under the shadow of his +cap-brim showed smudged with oil and dust; but his shoulders were broad +and straight and his frame tall and lithe. Whatever the law said, this +man was not the man who had shot Craig! She alone could swear it! + +She felt suddenly a kind of terror of the place. She touched Malcolm's +arm. "I've seen enough--please! Could we turn back now?" + +The Warden overheard and nodded. "Just wait here a moment," he said, +"and we'll go. I want to take a look forward." He strode from them +down the broad way between the lines of workers. + +Harry heard the step behind him on the steel floor. He thought the +others were with him. Under the rattle of the cogs his sick +imagination caught the swish of a dress--almost he thought he caught a +faint breath of a familiar perfume--and he averted his face till they +should pass. It was by reason of this that his lowered eyes caught a +stealthy movement in the man at the next machine--a movement of one +hand which crept under his jacket, and jerked forth, clutching +something shining and murderous. + +Harry acted without conscious thought, by swift and certain instinct. +As the lean arm, tense with hate, went up behind the Warden's back, he +leaped forward with a cry of warning, caught the wrist whose hand held +the sharpened file, and both went down clinched and struggling together. + +The cry, sharp and strained, pierced across the din. It brought the +Superintendent to his feet on his platform, like the release of a +coiled spring, a revolver in either hand. + +"Back to the door!" he roared, and Malcolm's sinewy arm swept the two +girls behind him. The fierce clamour of a bell sounded outside. There +was sudden pandemonium. Doors opened, men in uniform dashed by her, +and on the platform the Superintendent stood, crouching forward like a +panther about to spring, still as a statue, both hands outstretched +with their gleaming muzzles, his eyes flashing over the room. + +In that desperate struggle, as he clung to the maddened convict, Harry +was conscious only of the strenuous confusion--of commands that snapped +like whip-lashes--of the burly form of the Warden above him and that of +a "trusty" who snatched at the vicious weapon--of a sudden anguished +pang in his shoulder. + +Then, swiftly and sweetly, the whole world slipped away into blankness +and silence. + + +A half hour later, as Echo and Nancy sat with Malcolm in the office, on +the ground floor of the frame building just inside the great double +gates of the prison, the Warden entered. His grave face lightened with +a smile of reassurance. + +"All well," he said cheerfully. "It came close to being a nasty wound, +but the doctor says no harm will come of it, though he will be in the +hospital ward for a week. I wouldn't have had this fracas happen while +you ladies were here for a year's salary," he added, "and that's a +fact!" + +Nancy's face was still pale, and she shivered as he spoke, but she gave +a little laugh, as she said, "We didn't bring you luck to-day, did we? +You'll be wary of Friday visitors hereafter." + +"On the contrary," he asserted, "I'm inclined to think I'm a mighty +lucky man. It was cunningly planned, with collusion, too, and if it +had succeeded there might have been a very bad hour or two--for +everybody." + +Malcolm turned to him. "The man saved the situation, Warden, and it +was a very close call, indeed. If there was collusion I imagine it'll +be dangerous in the ranks for him hereafter." + +The Warden nodded. "I've thought of that. The trusty who has been +clerking in the Record-Room, upstairs, is sick, as it happens. He +shall have the place. He sha'n't come to any harm as long as I'm in +charge, rest assured of that." + +He went with them to the great double-gate. "It's a curious thing," he +said thoughtfully, as they said good-bye, "that the man who did that +should have been the very one we had been talking about, isn't it?" + +The same thought was in all their minds. There had flashed across +Echo's, too, a memory of her childhood, a revolting incident of another +prison, where a hundred convicts had risen, had killed their keepers +and for two days had run desperate riot within the enclosure--till +troops had been rushed to the scene. What if that flaming human lava +had burst beyond control to-day? She shuddered. + +A single hand, maybe, had prevented this--the hand of the man who once +before had saved her--who was now shut in this horrible place, perhaps +for want of the testimony which she alone could give! + + + + +CHAPTER XXXII + +THE COMING OF JOHN STARK + +Harry rose from his seat at the desk in the Record-Room and went over +to the window. The frost had painted silver ferns and sea weed on its +pane, and the prison yard, under the high, saffron-tinted sun, was +white with a light powdering of snow which hid its harsh outlines and +dingy yellow hue with a mantle of purity and beauty. It was a stinging +cold though sunshiny afternoon. Along the wall the sentries, as they +paced, swung benumbed arms to start the sluggish blood coursing to +warmth. Here and there on the hard ground a pigeon traced its feathery +footprints, startling the quarrelsome sparrows, and above in the clear +sky a buzzard drew widening circles, an ink-blot on the blue. Across +the open space came the muffled roar of the shops and down under the +inner gateway the gate-keeper was stamping his Arctic-shod feet and +whistling "Weep no more my lad-ee," in syncopated time. + +Two weeks Harry had been in the hospital ward, for after those months +of confinement the depleted blood had made recuperation slow; but he +had steadily mended, and now, though still at times his healing +shoulder pained him somewhat, he was practically as strong as before. +He had been acutely grateful for the change to the pleasant +Record-Room, with its broad window to the sunshine and the drier upper +air, for the fact that he no longer tramped in the lock-step or took +his meals in the common mess-room--most of all for release from his +unsavoury cell-mate. For since the affair in the shop, he had been +given a cell to himself. + +His momentary glimpse on that day of Echo had stung his every sense to +quivering protest. It had pierced, as with a fiery sword, the torpor +which had unwrapped his love with its protecting armour and that love +had awaked to agonised consciousness, vivified and intensified. Then, +in his loneliness, the knowledge that the woman he would have died for +had left him to drag out his penalty, would sweep over him till a +fierce hatred of her would rise up in him--to be swept away as swiftly +by something sweeter and stronger that would not be denied. So, in the +end, mingled with this confusion of feeling, there came to him the +knowledge that the bitter conviction that she could never again be +anything to him, with the contempt for life which had grown from it, +had been nevertheless inexpressibly softened by the living warmth of +her presence, sad and fleeting as that had been. + +Presently Harry turned back to the desk, and picked up the annotated +card, a portion of whose record he had been about to transcribe in +permanent form in a leathern tome that lay there. It was the +filing-card on whose reverse side was pasted his own photograph, +full-face and profile, and containing his physical measurements--taken +upon the precise and delicate instruments that lined the room--which +had been filled out on the day of his arrival. It was the sight of +this, with the bitter memories it evoked, which had given him pause. +There it was, an enduring monument, stamping forever the man to whom it +corresponded, a convict, thrust, so long as he should live, from the +society of clean and upright men and women, debarred even from the +exercise of the functions of citizenship! + +As he dipped his pen in the ink, a quick step sounded on the stairway, +and the door opened to admit a man wearing a frogged overcoat with huge +fur collar and lapels, and a fur cap whose flaps were turned down over +his ears. He was about Harry's age though of slightly heavier build, +with somewhat similar firm chin and grey eyes, but with cheeks in which +the blood darkled redly, and across one was a slanting scar, slight but +sufficiently perceptible. He carried a small valise which he set down, +blowing on his nattily-gloved fingers. + +"Oh! I beg pardon," he said. "The Warden told me I might change my +togs up here. I didn't know the room was occupied." + +"You'll not disturb me," answered Harry. "As it happens, I am occupied +too." + +The stranger laughed--a rather eager, boyish laugh which caught Harry +with a subtle tang of old acquaintance. With the pen in his hand, he +was staring curiously at that ruddy cheek and its slanting scar, his +mind following something elusive and far away. He was feeling the edge +of a half-recollection, vague and shadowy and dream-like, of a saw-dust +bar-room floor lighted with flaring lamps, of ribald conversation, of a +deal table across which a face like that had looked at him. But the +memory at which he grasped had belonged to that phase of intoxication +in which sense-impression had left no enduring record, and he could not +capture it. + +John Stark was unconscious of the fixed gaze. He had opened the valise +upon a chair and now was laying its contents upon another. Harry saw +with surprise that these included a striped jacket and trousers, flat +peaked cap and heavy hob-nailed shoes such as each inmate of the prison +wore. Last he took out a flat tin box which opened out in two +sections, and set it on the end of the desk. It was a "make-up" box of +the stage dressing-room, and the sight of its tiny compartments, +holding rouge, lamp-black, powder and grease-paint, the pencils and +hare's foot, brought back to Harry with a rush old days of amateur +theatricals and society stagery. These articles laid out, the other +began rapidly to undress. He chuckled as, turning, he caught the look +of puzzle on Harry's face. + +"I'm not really crazy," he said laughingly. "The fact is, I'm trying +an experiment--with the Warden's permission. For half an hour I'm +going to take my place with those fellows down there;"--he nodded +towards the window--"going in to supper with them. I have a bet on +with the Deputy Warden that I can do it so that none of the +Superintendents will spot me!" + +He had discarded shirt, collar and shoes, and was now arraying himself +in the coarse striped garments and clumsy foot-wear. He looked himself +over half-humorously. "Ugh!" he exclaimed. "I swear, it gives me the +creeps. This is the real stuff, you see! I don't get the true spirit +of the thing when I play it." + +"When you play it?" repeated Harry, inquiringly. + +"Oh," said the other. "I ought to explain. I'm starring in 'The Jail +Bird'--the play that's on here this week. I have the title-role. It's +a fad with me to get up my 'business' first-hand, and this institution +is too good a chance to miss. It's mighty good press-agent stuff for +the local papers, incidentally!" The lid of the tin box was a mirror, +and propping this upright, he now busied himself with the facial +make-up, applying a greyish grease-paint which obliterated the scar on +the cheek and lent the requisite pallor, and deepening this with darker +pencilled shades. In the midst of his labour he asked: + +"Have you seen the piece?" + +"No," said Harry, grimly. "Our business here interferes somewhat with +our evening pleasures." + +Something in the tone made the other look up quickly. Harry's cap had +been pushed back when the visitor had entered. He had on, also, a +spotless duck over-jacket which buttoned close up to the throat. Now +the cap was pulled low on his forehead, and the jacket was open, +revealing the tell-tale stripes beneath. The actor started. + +"By Jove!" he ejaculated, in embarrassment. "I thought--I didn't +know--" + +"So I perceived," said Harry calmly. "Pray do not apologise, however. +The atmosphere does not tend to develop over-sensitiveness. I must +congratulate you on your appearance. The effect is really wonderful." + +There was no sarcasm in his words: the illusion was marvellously +carried. When the peaked cap was pulled over the other's forehead, a +little to one side, Harry thought him highly likely to carry off his +wager with the Deputy Warden. + +At the moment the bell sounded--the signal to knock off work for the +early supper--and John Stark rose hastily. "I'm off now for the +lock-step," he said, with his hand on the door. "By the way, if these +duds of mine are in the way, chuck 'em in some other room. I can dress +anywhere." + +The brogans clattered down the stair. + +Harry went to the window and watched him cross the yard, a turnkey, +wearing a suppressed grin, by his side. Then he returned to the desk, +but his pen lay idle by his hand. The curious visit, with its whiff of +the outside world, had been packed with clutching reminders of things +that had had pleasant part in his past--reminders of society nights +when, for sweet charity's sake, he had played those old mimic roles. +Some one entered, bringing his supper in a tin pail, and went out +again, but he did not look up. He was thinking with bitterness that +the flippant masquerader, sitting now with that striped company in the +mess-room, would presently emerge, free to pass out into the glad +world. It would be only a lark to laugh over, an essay in effrontery +performed for a wager and the delectation of a press-agent! + +Harry suddenly felt the longing to be free take him by the throat, so +that he trembled in every limb with the force of it. He smelled the +wind racing across frosty meadows; he could almost fancy that he heard +the flow of river-water under its icy coverlet; he could almost see the +gnarled catalpas along the Allen driveway lifting their wintry twisted +arms toward him. What would it not mean to him if he, like that +cheerful stroller, might but slough off this hateful, unnatural +character and step forth, himself again! + +He started. A thought mad as a nightmare had flashed through his +brain. He felt his blood beat to his temples; then instantly he became +icily cool and tense in every nerve. + +In another moment he had thrown off his over-jacket, and was seated +before the make-up box. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIII + +THE UNDERSTUDY + +With the certainty of ancient practice he applied rouge and pencil +deftly to his face, rubbing in a deeper tinge on the cheeks, shadowing +the temples, accentuating by ever so little the corners of eyes and +mouth. Lastly he drew a slanting scar on the right cheek, emphasising +it a trifle, as the keynote of the counterfeit. + +He looked at himself, swiftly, critically. There was but the one +double gate and the single watchman to pass--and the sunlight was not +bright under the archway! And luckily the fur cap, with its ear-flaps, +effectually hid the cropped scalp. He wasted no time in changing +clothes, but turned up the striped trousers and the sleeves of the +jacket and donned the smart habilaments over his prison rig, the extra +lining compensating for his slighter form. In five minutes he was +completely dressed, even to spats and flaunting tie. All the while he +was thinking rapidly and coolly, weighing contingencies, estimating +chances, taking into lightning account each detail which might mean the +slenderest advantage in the desperate game. Lastly he thrust his +prison cap under his coat and put the make-up box and the tin +dinner-pail into the empty valise. + +Overcoated and with the valise in his hand, he strode to the door--to +come back to his desk with a quick afterthought, to pick up the +record-card that bore his own number, and slip it into an inner pocket. +Then he opened the door and went quickly down the stair. + +Fate was kind. The Warden was not in his office. As a matter of fact, +at that very moment, with outward gravity yet with inner amusement, he +was witnessing John Stark's nonchalant experiment and finding the bit +of clever impersonation, under the very eyes of his unsuspecting +assistants, vastly diverting. + +Harry went out to the gate. + +The watchman looked up, surprised. "Hello!" he said. "The half-hour +isn't up already, is it? Or did you weaken?" + +Harry laughed. "Not I!" he answered, airily. "I've had no end of a +lark. I'd have stayed longer only I've got a rehearsal on. I could +have pulled the wool over their eyes for a week!" As he spoke he drew +out a silver cigarette-and-match box which his hand had encountered in +the overcoat pocket, and lighted a cigarette behind his cupped hands. +In that crucial instant he dared not look at the face so near him and +his heart seemed to flutter and then stop beating--till there came the +ponderous grind of the great lock as the inner gate swung open. + +The watchman was chuckling as he unlocked the outer barrier. "Well, +that's one on the Deputy Warden!" he said appreciatively. "You're a +clever one to have pulled it off!" + +Harry stepped jauntily through. "Come and see me do it on the stage," +he said, nodding a brisk good-bye. "It's up to the Warden to stand +tickets all round, I should think!" + +The gate clanged shut behind him. + +The sound sent to his soul the first agonised stab of futility. He had +won through those pitiless encircling walls, yet what chance had he of +ultimate escape, after all, there on the highway, in that recognisable +costume, with scant grace at best from pursuit? Then, even as the cold +wave of hopelessness swept over him, he saw something which sent his +blood running like quicksilver; it was the actor's empty motor standing +at the side of the road. + +In another minute he was in its seat, his grip on the wheel, his hand +touching the lever of the self-starter. It was not of a make which he +knew, but he had always been an ardent motorist, had known every cog +and bearing of his own car's intricate mechanism, and before the +machine was well under way he had mastered its essentials. + +As the snow-dusted road spun out behind him, he drew deep, gasping +breaths of the cold air and felt the dimming sunshine on his face like +the touch of some magical elixir, yet he was free from agitation, his +mind was working clearly and coolly. The alarm would come soon. When +the genial young tragedian returned to the office building, he would be +likely to assume that his suggestion had been acted upon, and his +clothing bestowed in another room. Subsequent inquiry might be worth a +few minutes. The absence of Harry's cap and the tin pail would suggest +that he had gone to his cell to eat his supper, a privilege that was +his when he cared to avail himself of it--this would be good for a few +minutes more. A general search of the buildings would be next in +order. How soon the inquiry would embrace the watchman at the outer +gate could not be guessed. Altogether he might count, perhaps, on a +half-hour. He could cover few miles in that time, and telephone and +the clicking wire would soon be busy. It would be the automobile that +would be first traced, and the sentries on the wall would report the +direction he had taken. He must rid himself of the car, and somehow +double on his trail! + +Far to the right, across wastes of snowy fields and numb, glittering +trees, a line of telegraph poles thrust up darkly against the skyline. +A quick plan flashed to his mind. The road was topping a gentle rise +now, where the wind had swept the hard ground clear of the light snow. +He stopped, and cast a glance before and behind him; no vehicle was in +sight. He sprang out and pulled out the rails of the fence that lined +the road, then ran the motor into the field and into a hollow of dead, +rustling stalks, where stood a group of hayricks which would +effectually hide it from the highway. He left the fur-overcoat and the +valise in the car, replaced the fence-rails and ran across the field to +the railroad track. A quarter of a mile further along stood a small +country station and he turned his steps thither, making shift as he +went to wipe the grease-paint from his face with John Stark's perfumed +handkerchief. + +The ticket-seller, who combined with his duties those of freight and +express agent and general factotum, was sweeping out his tiny box of an +office. "What is the next train west?" inquired Harry. + +"None till nine to-night," was the reply. "There's one due in twenty +minutes, but she only stops for through passengers." + +Before entering Harry had gone through John Stark's pockets; now he +pushed a bill under the little wicket. "I happen to be going through," +he said easily. + +The other made out the ticket with deliberation, laboriously counted +the change and leisurely went out to the platform to affix the red +flag. The minutes that passed thereafter the lone passenger was all +his life to remember as a ghastly interval measured by dragging epochs +that drew themselves snail-like across some incalculable duration of +time. When the express came to its grinding stop cold drops of +perspiration were on Harry's face. He swung himself aboard and went +forward to the day-coach. + +Five minutes later the train stopped at a water-tank, to refresh the +thirsty engine. A half mile away, outlined sombrely against the dusky +evening blue, rose a huddle of dingy yellow walls. The occupant of the +seat in front of him leaned to look through the window. + +"What are those buildings?" he asked interestedly of the conductor, who +was passing down the aisle. + +"That's the State Penitentiary," was the answer. + +As he spoke through the silence there came a deep, dull _boom_, +repeated again and again--the sound of a monster bell, tolling. + +"What's that?" the other asked. Windows went up along the car. Harry +lifted his also, with outward coolness but with a curious spasm of the +heart. The conductor stooped to peer beside him. + +"It's the alarm," he said. "A prisoner must have escaped." + +Amid excited exclamations the train started again, and the conductor +withdrew his head. "They'll soon get him," he predicted, as he punched +Harry's ticket. "The poor devil won't get far in those striped clothes +they make them wear!" + +"No," said Harry. "I fancy he won't." + + +Night had fallen, the dark relieved by the dim lustre of a thin new +moon, when Sevier rose and sauntered back to the platform. The train +was passing through a defile and laboriously puffing up a grade. He +looked back into the lighted car; no one was observing him. He +buttoned his coat close about him and poising on the lowest step to +choose his ground, sprang off into a snowbank. + +He had made his leap with all the care possible, but the speed of the +train was such that only the snow and his padded clothing saved him +from serious injury. As it was it was some minutes before he could +regain his breath, and then it came with a keen stab that seemed a +sword piercing his shoulder--a sharp complaint from the recent wound. +He rose painfully, but at the first step collapsed with a groan, +realising that he had twisted his ankle badly. With lips compressed +from the wretched pang, he rose again and set the injured member to the +ground, forcing it to bear his weight. For a while each step was +agony, then this dulled somewhat and he went steadily on, limping along +the uneven ties. + +When he came to the crest of the rise he stopped and looked about him. +He knew, roughly, where he was. Across the dark valley unrolling at +his feet under a sky that shook with stars, he could dimly make out +another darker ridge. Beyond lay a deeper valley and beyond that the +foot-hills of the Blue Ridge, and there, forty miles away as the crow +flies--how far by the irregular route he must take he could not +estimate--lay his mountain lodge, the lonely little demesne of forest +and stream, whither he had been wont to go for summer weeks of hunting +and fishing, with its rough but spacious bungalow presided over by his +care-taker, old "Jubilee Jim," whose father had been a slave of his +father before the Civil War. + +Forty miles as the crow flies! Across a difficult and sparsely-settled +country, with now only the faint moonlight and a natural instinct of +direction to guide him, in patent-leather shoes and with a sprained +ankle! + +He set his teeth and plunged down the declivity through the tumbled +rocks and snow-drifts. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIV + +THE CRUCIBLE + +Echo stood at the gate of Midfields, her gloved hand delaying to close +it, her eyes gazing down the featureless street along which yellow +window-squares were beginning to spring out, and vague figures moved, +now standing out sharply under the newly lighted arc-lamps at the +crossing, now vanishing beyond into the chill windless dusk. Behind +her lay the purpling lawn, with its tumult of leaves under the acacias, +the oaks with their red-lipped foliage and the tall chrysanthemums at +the edge of the frost-touched grass that stretched like the skins of +young fawns about the great house with its fluted columns, dim and grey +now in the deepening twilight. About her were only the quiet of the +cold evening, the bewildered shadows huddling beneath the shrubs, and +the faint snap of frosty tree-branches in the tightening of the first +bonds of winter, above only the windless silence and a wild white moon +flowing through dusky wreaths of cloud. + +But she felt no soothing influence in the hush. + +Her mind was far away, in another city and state; her thought had +entered again the gloomy prison which she had visited with Nancy +Langham and Malcolm--on a day when a prisoner had intervened to save +the Warden's life. The peace of autumn evenings brought no comfort to +that place, save it were the mere rest of wearied bodies. A city of +itself, it was as alien to that city so near it, of comfortable homes +and pleasant people which she had visited, as the deep life of the +coal-miner is alien to that of the free hunter who breathes the sweeter +air a thousand feet above the other's sunless toil. Outside of those +walls folk were eager and merry; inside lights were dim, life itself +sluggish and inept; there were sore hearts, sterile hopes, smouldering +hatreds, an oligarchy of despotism ruling with slow cruelties, a +community of apathy and despair. + +Since her return from the Langhams she had moved, so it seemed to her, +in a kind of sombre dream in which her daily duties were mechanical and +involuntary and her only real life that inner consciousness which had +writhed and struggled unceasingly. A sense of actual, personal guilt +bound her, by a bond stronger than steel, to that unknown prisoner in +the Penitentiary, weighing upon her spirit as heavy as a promise to the +dead. + +What should she--what was she bound to do? Which way should she turn? +There was Mason's opinion, based upon a long and sensitive intercourse, +that the man was no criminal; that, had he been absolved of attempted +murder, he could have cleared himself of the baleful association. But +that, after all, was only Mason's opinion. He might be wrong. And if +so, though the man had not fired the shot, he was a partner in his +comrade's iniquity, a party to the greater guilt. An enemy to society, +his penalty was just and right. Was she called upon, on such an empty +hypothesis, to take upon herself a horrible mantle of notoriety? So +she had reasoned, but the self-accusation had remained, not to be +argued back by casuistry, a stern visitant that stood insistently +before her, pointing the stern finger of denunciation. + +As she stood by the gate in the dusk, she shivered as though the still +cold penetrated beneath her furs. She must tell the truth! Whatever +the result, she must disclose the part she had played. She had no +thought that this might be accomplished without publicity, or that +testimony which might be basis for executive action could be secret. +In imagination she pictured herself standing before the same tribunal +by which an innocent man had been condemned, telling her story to the +impartial and impersonal Law--telling it openly, before all the world! + +The world? It was not this thought which in this moment of harrowing +decision seemed to scratch her soul like an etcher's needle. She was +thinking now only of Harry Sevier. He stood out alone, sharply, +clearly defined against the meaningless multitude. She could no longer +take refuge in her pride; that had vanished long ago in the misery of +his absence. She wanted him, and him only, desired him with all the +strength of her woman's love, which had been sharpened and deepened by +the experiences through which she had been passing. When he returned, +it would be to find her the centre of an open scandal, sprung to new +and sensational life--the "mysterious woman" who had been blazoned in a +hundred headlines, her name no longer spotless, but cheapened by tawdry +mystery and smirched by innuendo! Would it not kill any vestige of +love his heart might still hold for her? + +And yet beneath her dread and apprehension there had come to her in her +struggle the awakening of something as deep and imperative as her +love--the insistent "Thou shalt!"--the nascent must of truth and +honour, fruit of generations of clean ancestry, which brought clearer +vision and resolve. + +She turned from the gate at length, her step dragging as if from +weariness. She had a strange feeling that in that final hour of +decision she had grown physically and mentally old. + +As she neared the house, there came from the placid street the raucous +_honk_ of a motor and the sound of masculine voices lifted in a song +whose refrain solicitously inquired as to the whereabouts of a certain +dog named Rover. The chording was somewhat uncertain, but any lack was +more than made up by laughter and noise. She recognised the baritone +as that of her brother, Chisholm. + +Chilly jumped down at the gate, and as the automobile turned and sped +back, its occupants calling jovial good-byes, he ran after her up the +drive. Overtaking her, he leaned to kiss her cheek, as she caught a +familiar odour upon his breath. She turned her face aside. + +He noted this with a little laugh. "Come, prunes and prisms," he said, +"out with it! Yes, I've had a drink--numerous ones, in fact. Now on +with the lecture; let joy be unconfined!" + +"When did I ever lecture you, Chilly?" Echo answered, dully. + +"You _have_ been pretty decent, that's a fact, Echo," he responded, +with humorous lugubriousness. "I wish father took after you more!" + +They had reached the porch now and he stole a quick glance through the +window. "I discern the shadow of my doting parent aforesaid," he +remarked flippantly, "and having a due regard for the proprieties--and +peace--I think I'll slip in the side-door and give the prodigal a +wash-up and a clove before he enters the lion's den." + +He nodded laughingly and left her to enter the front door alone. + +A few minutes later, divested of coat and furs, she came into the +drawing-room where her father and mother sat, the former with his +magazine and the latter perusing the evening paper. Mrs. Allen +withdrew her lorgnette and looked up. + +"By the way, Echo," she said. "Here's the closing chapter of the +adventure you and Nancy had at the jail." She turned the page and read +aloud: + + +"It became known to-day that a dangerous criminal escaped day before +yesterday and got clean away from the Penitentiary of our sister state. +The prisoner, who was serving a term of twenty years for burglary, a +few months since shot down Mr. Cameron Craig, the well known financier, +in his library at midnight. It is to be hoped that there will be a +close examination into what appears to be a glaring exhibition of lax +methods and unpardonable carelessness on the part of the prison +authorities." + + +Echo could not have had a deeper sensation of amazement and relief. A +wave of excitement had passed over her, leaving her cool and +self-possessed, and able to take a natural part in the conversation +that followed. But in her heart she was saying over and over: + +"I am safe--safe! There is no question now of my telling! The secret +is mine--mine--mine!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXXV + +SANCTUARY + +In his little cabin, close by a big log-walled bungalow on a lonely +slope of the Blue Ridge, now snugly frozen in by its winter snows, old +"Jubilee Jim" lay in a deep sleep. The moonlight, paling before the +coming dawn, came through the single window, lighting dimly the seamed +black face on the pallet, the sacks of flour and beans in the corner, a +side of bacon hung against the wall and strings of dried red-peppers +and bunches of herbs suspended from the rafters. On the floor before +the fire-place, in which a few red embers still glowed, snored a yellow +hound, gaunt and long of limb. + +There was no other house within miles of the place, but solitariness +was a habit with Jubilee Jim, and he did not miss human companionship. +Ten years before, the man who had chosen that wild spot and had built +the bungalow for occasional summer outings with his chosen comrades, in +which they might shoot and fish and live in primitive, health-giving +fashion, has ensconced the old negro there as general cook and +care-taker. He had built himself a tight little cabin close at hand +and remained there year in and year out to guard the building against +the frequent forest fires. In his pottering negro way he was a Jack of +many trades, in the summer cultivating a little cleared patch of +"garden truck" back of his cabin and in winter trapping small game, and +of evenings poring over his Bible, spelling out the words +laboriously--a gift he had learned many years before from some country +"missioner." Three or four times a year, leaving the lean hound in +possession, he trudged ten miles to the nearest village for what +supplies he needed. But on these occasions he felt no temptation to +remain with his kind, toiling back contentedly to his little cabin, his +hound, and his Bible. + +Suddenly, in the tense frozen silence, the great hound stirred and +lifted his head with a low guttural growl. His master woke and turned +on the creaking couch. + +"He-e-sh!" he said impatiently. "Whut fo' yo' want ter mek dat noise +en steal mah sleep!" + +At the remonstrance the lean tail thumped the board floor, but another +louder growl, deep and menacing, came from the shaggy throat. The old +negro lifted himself and listened. + +"Sumpen out dar!" muttered Jubilee Jim, straining his ears, for now he +caught the sound that had pricked the acuter hearing of the animal--a +curious, struggling sound like something wallowing in heavy snowdrifts. + +"Sumpen _big_!" Jubilee Jim's wrinkled face looked puzzled in the +moonlight and his eyes rolled to the wall where, on two wooden pegs, +sat an old-fashioned shot-gun. "Don' reck'n et's er bar!" he whispered +to the hound. "Ain't ben no bar eroun' hyuh en mawn thuhty yeahs!" He +got up and set his ear to the crack of the door. As he bent his +stooped frame, something lunged against the wall outside, and at the +sound the hound's bristles rose and he sent forth a fierce, rumbling +bay that rattled the window. + +"Et's er _man_!" said Jubilee Jim. He turned hastily to the rough-hewn +table and lighted a lantern; then snapping a chain into the dog's +collar and tethering him to the wall, he went to the door and lifted +its heavy bar. It opened inward and there half stumbled, half fell +across the threshold a snowy figure that collapsed at his feet. + +"Mah Lawd!" ejaculated the old man. "What he doin' hyuh?" + +With a sharp word to the leaping, raging hound, he dragged the +recumbent body inside, shut the door, and lighted a bundle of pine +knots in the fire-place. In the bright yellow light that flooded the +cabin he knelt down and examined the man who lay there. He drew off +the frosty fur cap from the close-clipped head. The coat was stiff +with frost so that he had trouble to unbutton and remove it, and the +shoes were broken. He took a knife and carefully cut them off from the +feet, noticing with quick pity that one ankle was swollen to twice its +natural size. + +"Reck'n yo' mos' froze ter def!" said Jubilee Jim. "En starved too!" +He rummaged on a shelf, found an iron skillet containing some broth and +set it close to the blazing wood. Then, he drew the limp figure upon +his couch and began to remove the clothing, now wet and clinging. + +As he opened the shirt, however, he started back with an exclamation. + +Well he knew what that jacket with its black and yellow-grey stripes +meant! Had he not often seen the sullen chain-gang breaking stone on +the mountain roads? The man who lay before him was a criminal in +desperate flight in stolen garments! He could tie him fast, +unconscious and helpless as he was, and leave the dog to guard him, +while he went down to the town for officers. But as he thought, +something else came to his mind. "Sick en in prison, en ye visited +me!" he muttered. "De Good Man he say dat. Dis hyuh man done been in +prison, en he moughty sick too. What dee Good Man do, Ah wondah? +Reck'n he ain' gwine lock him up, not 'treckly, nohow!" + +He saw a crimson stain that spread over the stripes. He touched it--it +was blood. + +Five minutes later, in the warming cabin, he was examining an opened +wound in the shoulder of the insensible man. He washed it carefully +and bound it up with some of the medicinal herbs that hung from the +rafters. This done, he took the skillet from the fire-place and with a +spoon forced a little of the hot liquid, drop by drop, between the +clenched teeth. Under these ministrations a semblance of life began to +return to the exhausted frame, and with it the chilled body rushed into +a fever. The head began to roll from side to side and the lips to +mutter indistinguishably. + +The hound had grown quiet now, and released from the chain, came to +sniff at the bunk. All at once he flung up his great head with a low +howl, then, crouching, licked the nerveless hand that hung down. + +[Illustration: All at once the hound flung up his great head with a low +howl, then, crouching, licked the nerveless hand that hung down] + +Jubilee Jim looked in startled amaze, then seized the lantern and held +it close. "Who dis hyuh?" he said. + +As if at the challenge, the eyes in the white face opened and for a +single instant consciousness flickered there. "Jube--" said a weak +voice, "you--old--scoundrel--" Then the eyes closed and the mutterings +recommenced. + +The lantern rattled on the floor, as the old negro fell upon his knees +by the pallet. "Et's him!" he cried. "Dee Lawd he'p! Et's Marse +Harry hese'f!" He leaned and looked, with a painful bewilderment, at +the striped garments, the smooth, clipped scalp. "Huccome he got dem +close on?" he said to himself, half-fearfully. He stood a moment +looking from them to the pallet, then hastily rolled the sodden things +into a bundle and thrust it out of sight behind one of the sacks on the +floor. + + +Late the next afternoon the smoke from the stone chimney of the big +bungalow rose in a pale spiral into the keen windless air. Inside a +leaping fire of chestnut wood burned on the huge hearth and Harry lay +on a comfortable, blanket-covered couch in the corner. All day long +Jubilee Jim had watched beside him, as he tossed in delirium, now and +then touching the hot hand, laying cooling cloths on the fevered wound, +or feeding him with a spoon. He had not dared go down the mountain to +fetch a doctor, fearing to leave his patient so long alone. + +All day, as he watched, his slow brain had been busy with the +strangeness of that arrival--most of all with the mystery of the +striped clothes. To his simple intelligence, unvexed by the +complexities of life in communities, evil and good stood out in sharp +and irreconcilable contradistinction, and the garments were a harrowing +symbol. But deep in him was that profound, unreasoning belief--the +South's touching legacy of ante-bellum days--that trust and confidence +that is dog-like and unswerving. + +Towards evening, when the sick man became easier and he lay more +quietly, though his fever ran high, Jubilee Jim opened the door, and +stood looking out onto the lone, frosty hillside. The sun was going +down amid a flutter of scarlet scarfs and the marbled pines stood in +sombre clusters outlined like sentinels above the pansied twilight of +the snowy valley. At length he knelt down and with gnarled hands +clasped and eyes still on the colourful sky, he said: + +"O Lawd, Ah don' know what mek Marse Harry come hyuh lak dis. But yo' +knows what he done fo' ole Jube. Keep him yeahs en yeahs, feed him, en +when he so sick he gwine die, tek en git er doctah en cure him up. +When ah so old ah ain' no good no mo' he gimme dee lan' up hyuh fo' tuh +live on. Don' do nuffin cep'n watch dee house, en when he come +sometimes Ah cooks fo' him--das all! Ah don' know whaffuh he have on +dem wicked clo's--don' keer nuth'n erbout dat. Kase, Lawd, Marse Harry +ain' ben fo' tuh do nuth'n _bad_. Dey tek yo' darlin' son, dee Book +says, en put er crown o' tho'ns on he beautiful haid, en he ain' done +nuth'n 'tall cep'n good. Ah don' keer what Marse Harry have on; Ah +reck'n when he come lak dis, Yo' gwine he'p me he'p him--kase das what +he done fo' me!" + +As the earnest voice ceased, another spoke behind him. "Jube!" + +The old man rose hastily and came to the couch. "Yo' knows me ergen, +Marse Harry?" + +"Yes, Jube. When--did I get here?" + +"Dis mawnin', suh, befo' sun-up." + +"Was any one else here?" + +"No, Marse. Ain' ben nobody up hyuh sence dee fust snow-fall." + +Sevier was silent a moment, his eyes fixed on the black, affectionate +face. "Jube--bring me the things I--had on." + +The other crossed the room and came back with a suit which he laid on +the blanket. + +Sevier shook his head feebly. "Not those. The--others." + +Jubilee Jim hesitated, then turned and left the room. When he came +back the striped garments were in his hands. + +"Do you--know what--those are?" + +The faithful, old face turned a little away. "Ah reck'n dem am some +new-fangelly fishin'-close," he said, after a pause. + +A faint flicker of a smile touched the sick man's face. He understood. +"Put them--into--the fire." + +Sevier watched him, as he obeyed. He was very weak and his blood, +poisoned from the opened wound, was throbbing with fever. He was +preserving consciousness only by a great effort, but his gaze held +Jubilee Jim's steadily. + +"Jube, I want--no one to--know when I--came, or that I--am here--at all +... _No one_ ... Do you--understand?" + +"Yas, suh." + +"I'm going--to be--sick. But--no matter--how sick I--no one is to--be +brought here ... not a doctor ... nor--any one." Harry's strength was +failing now, and the words trailed into indistinctness. + +"Yas, Marse Harry." + +"I ... trust you ... Jube!" + +That was all. He was gone again into the fevered delirium. + +All that night, and for many days and nights thereafter, old Jubilee +Jim, faithful to his word, struggled with death over the body of Harry +Sevier. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVI + +JUBILEE JIM'S JOURNEY + +Harry stood in the doorway of the Bungalow, one hand shading his eyes, +looking down the twisting trail to where, far below, a dark blotch +toiled up the slope. During three days he had been alone, for Jubilee +Jim had gone upon a journey to the city where lay the old life from +which Harry had fled on the day he had ceased to be himself. The snows +were gone and an early spring day of azure and gold lay over the satiny +stillness of the folded hills. The fresh, pleasant air was full of the +whirr of birds and the smell of new bark and bursting buds, the slender +birches were unfurling the virginal green of their young leaves, and +here and there on the hillsides blossoms were showing. All nature was +fulfilling its annual mission of rebirth, audaciously triumphing over +autumn's death and winter's sepulture. + +The stalwart figure standing on the threshold was good to see. The +fever that had followed that terrible night of physical exhaustion had +been worsted at last by Jubilee Jim's homely medicaments and the balm +of peace and sleep. There had been days when Harry had been perilously +near the Great Adventure, but assiduous nursing and a splendid native +constitution had in the end conquered. The pure air of the balsam +forest and the comfort of the solitude had at length had their way with +him. The flesh had come back to the wasted frame, the old brightness +to the eye, and the flush of perfect health to the skin. Now, with his +curling hair and his crisp dark beard, trimmed as of old, he was again +the Harry Sevier of a year before--save that back of the eyes was a +steady something, a deep conscious strength that had come to him from +those bitter prison months when his soul had been tried in a fiery +furnace of pain. + +Sevier dropped his hand with a long sigh of relief, for at a turn in +the path, the dark blotch had resolved itself into the figure of a man, +followed by a great dog harnessed to a little cart. "It's Jube!" he +said aloud. "He's made the trip safely, and he's got the things!" + +This journey had been the outcome of much thought on Harry's part. +Lying there in the long weeks of convalescence, his mind had been busy +with the problem of the future. What to do? He could not stay forever +there on the mountain, a lonely hermit. Somewhere, he must take up +life again. When he had beguiled those dark prison moods with thoughts +of freedom, his imagination had pictured flight to some distant country +where, under a borrowed name, he might find a refuge, barren as that +refuge might be of all life's sweetness. Freedom now was his. Should +he put the past forever behind him, make his disappearance good, and +without more ado drop out of sight and sound forever? All his instinct +rebelled against this drastic solution, this cavalier denial of life +and its mental exercise for a career of empty futility. + +What remained then? To go back to the life he had left behind him on +the day he ceased to be Harry Sevier? + +Why not? He was free--free to be himself again. Only one, beside +Echo, had known that he and the captured house-breaker were +identical--that was Craig. And Craig had been taken from his path. +And who else would connect Harry Sevier, the lawyer, the club-man of +well-known and reputable past, the favourite of drawing-rooms--who +could ever associate him with a tawdry burglar and desperate convict +who had escaped from a penitentiary in another State? Once more +bearded and eye-glassed, without scar or mark to point resemblance or +beckon identification, recognition would be the wildest improbability. + +Once, as he bettered, Jubilee Jim had gone to the valley below to +return with a bundle of back-copies of the County newspaper, and as +Harry pored over these avidly, the old life had cried to him from every +line. The movement that had been called into life by the Civic Club, +in the hour when he had made the first speech of his life that had been +untinctured with any personal ambition or selfish motive, had gained +momentum; it had taken on party organisation and would be a force to be +reckoned with in the coming campaign. On that day he had had his first +taste of the joy of battle for a principle, and he longed inexpressibly +to throw the power, of which he was now more than ever conscious, into +the struggle for the new ideal. + +Suppose he went back, and Craig recovered the mind that was now in +eclipse--recovered and remembered? What then? + +His safety lay in the fact that no one possessed the clue to the +unthinkable reality. Craig, if he recovered, would possess this, and +if he in his right senses denounced him, the accusation, spectacular +and incredible as it might seem, would have to be seriously met. And +he could not meet it, for it would be true! So long as Craig lived, +the harrowing danger would always be there--a veritable Sword of +Damocles! Would not his future be forever a dubious adventure, haunted +always by a torturing shadow and the dread of discovery and shame? In +fancy he saw himself seized--to be suddenly confronted with that +shameful thing, to face a cloud of witnesses, be dragged back to a +cell, despised and broken, once more a convict--that, or else flight, +cringing and furtive, with the hounds of the law in cry! + +And yet, did not the chances that Craig would not regain his faculties +vastly preponderate? The newspapers Harry had read had not contained +the item chronicling Craig's journey to Buda-Pesth, and recovery was +not an imminent possibility to his mind. A year had gone by, and all +the skill that wealth could invoke had no doubt been applied, and +vainly. Even if sometime he to some extent recovered, it was more than +likely that his memory of that fatal night in his library would be +impaired. So Harry told himself. + +Over and over he followed the trail of painful reflection, in a vicious +circle that centred always in the one thought that sent his mind +shrinking in upon itself--Echo. What would that old life be to him, +denied its old relations? He and she were nothing to one another any +more: she was only a stinging memory. And he would see her, meet her, +talk with her, always with that sickening pretence of ignorance between +them, in a painful hypocrisy, till she should love and marry--some one +else than him! A wave of sick revolt had surged over him at the +thought. What to him was freedom, even life itself, if each hour held +the thumb-screw and the rack? + +Thus his resolve had swung back and forth, pendulum-like, tiring itself +with the endless question, and much thinking had brought him no nearer +a solution. Meanwhile time had been passing, and pending final +decision it was necessary for him in some measure to pick up the old +threads. There were responsibilities which he had not yet laid down. +There were his apartment, his servants, his office--for though +provision of a sort had fortunately been made for a time, his affairs +must now be put upon a securer basis which would permit of his taking +whatever course should seem best. So, finally, he had sent Jubilee Jim +on the long journey, after thoroughly schooling the old man on the part +he was to play. By him he had sent a letter to his man of business, +with minute instructions which would enable his affairs to be put in +order, another to his bank directing the sale of certain securities for +cash to be held at his instant demand, a third to Suzuki, his Japanese +valet, instructing him to send clothes, and other needful articles, his +private papers and a few books--for solace in this solitude until he +should have determined what to do. + + +"Good, Jube!" said Harry, as the old negro came into the room carrying +the big bundle from his little cart. "You got everything, then?" + +"Yas, Marse Harry. Ah brung dem all--dee papers, en dee close, en dee +money f'um dee bank, en all. Moughty glad ah got dis 'yer ole dawg +erlong, wid sech er heap o' money on me! Reck'n Ah spent er lot--had +tuh pay er qua'tah bof ways fo' him tuh ride on dee baggage-cyah: +wouldn't let him in dee smokah nohow. Dey argyfied he too big." + +Harry spread out the clothing on the table--suits of fashionable cut, +speaking loudly and insistently of the old life. Those he wore at the +moment had once been modish too, but their one-time owner would no +longer have recognised them, for they were threadbare and as battered +as the home-made moccasins on Harry's feet. At the first opportunity +he purposed anonymously to send John Stark double their value, with +certain articles the garments had contained--watch, cigarette-case, +cuff-links and what-not--now wrapped in a little package in a safe +hiding-place. + +Harry turned. "Well, Jube, tell me all about it. When you got off the +train, where did you go first?" + +"To de bank fust. Man dah was moughtily s'prised tuh git yo' lettah. +'Reck'n Mistah Sevier gwine tuh Africy er sumwhah,' he say." + +"Where did you go next?" + +"To Marse Dick Brent's office--whah dey meks dee newspapahs. Foun' him +settin' dah wid er pipe in he mouf, lookin' jes' ez nachul ez life, +same ez when he up hyuh wid yo'-all dat time. Ah cert'n'y glad tuh see +Marse Brent, en he ax pow'ful lot o' questions 'bout yo'. 'Mah lan'!' +he say; 'Tuh think he up in dat ole mount'n all dis God's-blessed time, +loafin' eroun' en gittin' fat ez er buzzard, when we-alls is wu'kin' +ouah souls tuh deff, en polytics gittin' red-hot. Whaffoh he do dat? +When he come up dar, Jube?' 'Well,' Ah says, 'Ah ain' got no haid fo' +gogerfy, Marse Brent, but Ah reck'n et mus' a ben las' fall sometime. +En den Marse Harry ben moughty sick in dee fall en wintah.' 'Sick!' he +say. 'Yo' ole rascal, yo' ain' got no mo' sense dan er snake have +hips! Why yo' don' sen' no word home erbout it?' 'Marse Harry he say +not tuh,' I say. 'Clar' he ain' gwine be no trubbil tuh nobody. So Ah +doctahs him en nusses him, en aftah while he git all right ergen. On'y +he so fon' o' de ole bungalow he jes' cain' bear tuh leave et.' 'Sho!' +he say. 'When Ah thinks o' dis hyuh ole wuk, Ah reck'n Ah don' blame +him none.' Den he tek me down tuh yo' place fo' dee clo's en +things--walkin' erlong wid me jes' lak Ah been yo'-se'f. 'Moughty lot +er folkses sorry yo' Marse Harry ain' erbout no mo', Jube,' he say. +'Speakin' o' dat,' he say, 'dahs one o' dem ar' folkses, Ah reck'n, +comin' down dee street dis minute!' Ah looks up en Ah sees er moughty +pretty young lady, tall en white lak er big lily. 'Dat Miss Echo +Allen,' he say." + +Harry turned away abruptly and looked out of the open doorway. His +face had paled. + +"Marse Brent tek off he hat, en he say, 'Miss Echo, what yo' reck'n dee +las' spectaculous news is? Harry Sevier been up at ole Blue Mount'n +all dis yeah!' Well, suh, seems lak dat lady so s'prised she mos' +faint right on dee spot. Den dee colah come back in huh cheeks en she +laugh--moughty happifyed laugh, but somehow, et got er little cry en it +too, sumwhah. She look at me, en huh eyes jes' de coloh o' er +cat-buhd's aig. 'Dis 'yer Jubilee Jim Sandahs,' Marse Brent say, 'whut +cook fo' Sevier's outfit up dah, en he also er numbah one nuss, kase +dee young loafah ben sick. Bet yo' ben ovah-feedin' him, Jube.' Miss +Echo she walk down dee street wid we-all, clar tuh yo' house. Ax how +yo' is now, how yo' look, is yo' got thinnah--fifty hundud things she +ax erbout. Ole Jube he sho' reck'n dat lady think er pow'ful sight o' +yo', Marse Harry!" + +Harry choked back an exclamation of misery. Every word had been like a +hot needle thrust into a quivering nerve. Her face, with its ivory +clearness, under its wonderful whorl of red-gold hair--her eyes deep as +sky-mirroring pools in late sun-light--her laugh, her voice! He +suddenly seemed to feel the actual touch of her hand in his, as vastly +sweet as the shadow of rose-leaves. + +"Marse Harry," said Jubilee Jim, humbly, "dee ole man don' know whuffoh +yo' come hyuh dis time, er whuffoh yo' so long 'way f'om home. Ain' +mah biz'ness, Ah knows. But dee mount'n ain' no place fo' folks tuh +stay, cep'n fo' ole Jube whut lib hyuh allus. En Marse Harry, down dah +in dee city, ev'y one jes' waitin' en watchin' fo' yo'. Marse Brent, +en ... en dee pretty lady, en all!" + +There was a long silence. At last Harry turned from the doorway. + +"Thank you, Jube," he said in a low voice. "Now--tell me about Aunt +Judy." + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVII + +THE CALL + +In the big living-room, now flooded with the mountain sunshine that +streamed in through the open door, Richard Brent leaned to knock the +ashes from his pipe against the end of the hewn bench on which he sat. +Then he looked up at Sevier standing in front of the empty fire-place. + +"Well," he asked, "what do you think of it? How's that for a chance, +eh?" + +Sevier nodded. One hand was tugging at his dark beard, the other was +clasping and unclasping nervously behind him. "The new organisation +can't win, of course," he answered quietly. "Politically speaking it's +too young, and it lacks leaders. But it can make a strong showing, I +should think." + +Brent laughed as he explored his capacious tobacco-pouch. "Especially +if the platform is built wide enough." He pointed to a newspaper he +had brought with him, that lay beside him. "That editorial of mine +hits the nail squarely on the head. There is one issue and only one +which will draw in all the elements opposed to the party that now +rules--that is the liquor issue. That _must_ go in!" + +A quick gleam crossed Harry's face. None but he knew what liquor had +done for him, no eye but his might see the pitiful trail it had dragged +across his burnished life! + +Brent laughed again. "It's strange that they don't see it!" he said. +"Can't they deduce anything. Look at the growth of similar movements +in other states. Do they really believe that any genuine +good-government party can sit in the same saddle with John Barleycorn? +That's why the thing has always failed in the past--compromise, +temporise, fusion. Fiddlesticks! why can't they take the bull by the +horns? They would, too, if there was some one who would crystallise +the thing in their minds." He shot a keen side-glance at Harry. "When +you made that Civic Club speech last year," he said shrewdly, "I picked +you for the Peter the Hermit of the new Gospel. And then, confound it! +you bury yourself in the wilds up here, while every one thinks you've +gone abroad, and I have to pack my rheumatic bones twenty miles on an +infernal burro, to dig you out of your shell!" + +Harry's eyes had been absently fixed on the spread-out newspaper. +Something in the other's words, in his manner, caught him. A colour +came to his cheeks. "Dig me out of my shell?" he repeated. "What do +you mean by that?" + +Brent looked at him intently for a long second. During the past year +he, like others, had wondered at his friend's long absence. At first +he had put it down to natural need of vacation and the other's failure +to communicate with his friends had seemed significant of no more than +the mild eccentricity which had always flavoured his actions. Only +later the thought had come to him that Harry's absence might be due to +an affair of the heart. This to him had pointed unerringly to Echo +Allen, and conviction had leaped to a certainty on the day when he had +seen her reception of Jubilee Jim's news of Harry's whereabouts. Had +it been a lovers' quarrel? he had wondered. If so, and she had sent +him away, she had repented of it, that was manifest. The news of +Harry's whereabouts, in his mind, had dovetailed with his knowledge of +the political situation and its need of leadership, and the second day +thereafter had found him on horseback, following the difficult trail to +Harry's mountain eyrie. He had come to grips now with his errand. He +sat suddenly upright. + +"Sevier," he said, "you've got to do it. You are the only one who can. +You've got to speak at that convention on the seventeenth and nail that +plank into the platform hard and fast!" + +Harry made a quick gesture, then left the fireplace and began to stride +up and down the room. During that silent, insistent gaze it had come +to him with a strange glow of excitement what Brent intended to say. +His heart was beating quickly, and a host of conflicting emotions were +rioting in his mind. The allusion to his speech of a year ago had +brought a throb of the old ecstasy of power--that power which he knew +was his now, and in greater degree. If he only might use it for this +good purpose! + +Brent, looking at him, uncrossed his long legs with a smile. "I +agree," he said, "that we may not be able to win this time, but it will +start it off right, and it will be a good fight. I'll bet you what you +like that within a week--if that plank is rightly hammered in--the +Good-Government Clubs all over the State will be wiring allegiance!" + +He got up, his lank, nervous figure braced with interest. + +"And what if we do lose this Governorship? It will be the first real +nail in John Barleycorn's coffin in this State!" + +Sevier had sat down on the blanketed couch. His gaze went past the +eager face before him and lingered on the sweet, warm world outside, +with all its suggestions of new growth and virile strength. But what +he really saw was very far away. Was he a poor coward then, to shrink +from a woman's smile, a woman's eyes? He put his face in his hands. +Possibilities were beckoning to him, dead things springing up alive, +old longings, ambitions, appetences plucking at him. + +For a time Brent did not speak. He had turned away and stood in the +sunny doorway, looking down the trail. At length he faced about. + +"Sevier," he said quickly. "What do you say? Will you do it?" + +Harry looked up. The colour had faded from his face, but it was alight +with a new energy and resolution. The call had found him, and at that +moment the harrowing dread--the problem itself, which had shown so +imminent--seemed to have grown dim, to have drawn into the far distance. + +"Yes," he answered slowly, "yes, Brent. I will come." + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVIII + +THE CHALLENGE + +Looking back upon that day, Sevier was often to wonder whether indeed +he had missed Fate's purpose, and blinded by a personal ambition, had +set its plan at naught. For that instant's decision was to prove the +key to a series of fateful doings which bore him on, irresistibly, into +a line of action from which, deliberately, he must have shrunk. + +But having set his hand, it was characteristic of him that he did not +falter. It had required resolution to put Echo and his relations with +her into the background, but he accomplished even this, and he allowed +no thought of possible complications to affect his mental serenity. +His face was composed and determined as he descended from the train, at +dusk of the sixteenth, at the familiar city station, to find--as Brent +had arranged--his motor waiting for him, with Bob, his chauffeur, +wearing a broad grin of welcome, at its door. So pleasantly habitual +it all seemed, so sharply remembered was each sight and sound as the +car sped through the glimmering traffic, that almost he could have +believed the past year, full as it had been of pain, a vacuous dream +and that no hideous hiatus had lain between the then and now. + +He was sensible for the first time of the intense mental strain he had +been labouring under since his sluggish prison routine had opened into +this dubious freedom--the tension of his struggle, the instinct of +impending catastrophe, and the ghastly doubt of himself where Echo was +concerned. The lassitude and inaction of the Bungalow had added to +this strain. The relief now of movement and action brought surcease, +and a feeling of present confidence, if not of definite security. +Before he reached his apartment, he was sufficiently himself to give +the welcome he received from Aunt Judy and from Suzuki a feeling of +usualness. Brent, with two or three others who saw eye to eye with +him, so far as the exigencies of the political situation were +concerned, spent a part of the later evening with him and the talk +furnished the final tonic--if any had been needed--to brace him for the +task that awaited. That night, for the first time in many months, he +slept the deep, fortifying sleep of utter and dreamless unconsciousness. + +With the morning he felt no misgiving or shadow of self-doubt. His +mind temporarily was clear and untroubled, all of the vexing problem +was pushed, by the singleness of his purpose, into the unknown future. +By his express wish, his arrival had not been published, and, except +for a few of its leaders with whom Brent had conferred, the circles of +the convention, then in session in the biggest auditorium the city +boasted, were no more aware than were the hosts of his friends, of his +coming. He spent the morning alone in his room, sitting movelessly +hour after hour, marshalling his ideas, assembling his forces, stirred +as he had never before been stirred by the quick suggestion of a living +issue and an unrivalled opportunity. + +He lunched quietly alone with Brent in a private room at the club, and +immediately afterward drove with him to the hall. Throughout the +morning the platform had been under discussion; the debate was now +about finished. It was the psychological moment for his effort. + +As Harry stood silent before the sea of faces, in the instant that +followed his recognition and introduction, he was conscious of a tense +and vital concentration that swept from him the last vestige of +self-consciousness. With his first measured words, too, the outline +which he had pondered during the morning vanished utterly from his +brain. He remembered nothing save the one thing he had come to do, saw +with his mind's eye only the monstrous evil against which he stood. + +Words came to him in a flood--words magically compelling, that burned +and quivered in their intense appeal. For an hour he held the interest +of the great assembly as no orator had done, sketching with hard and +pitiless directness the ramifications of the grim traffic that blasted +whatsoever it touched, that knew no social bar, before which the +magnate's mansion and the labourer's tenement were as one, against +which no bolt or chain--save it be one wrought by the law of a +Sovereign Commonwealth--might avail. + +In his words was no tang of the study, none of the didactic methods of +the arm-chair student, no array of statistics. What he expressed had +been seared upon his soul, in inextinguishable letters and as he spoke +shooting pictures etched themselves as if on some quivering panorama in +his brain: he saw the black bottle in the wall-cabinet of his inner +office--the hidden sanctuary where he had signed away his talent and +linked his years to the demon of remorse: he saw the representative of +the great Corporation, whose power flowed from that traffic, holding in +his merciless hand the happiness of a woman that had been dearer than +his own life: he saw the cringing hatred in the eyes of Paddy the +Brick, the furtive drink-lined faces of the jail corridors. And in his +passionate denunciation, he called upon those who heard him to do their +part to rid the state of its Master and to set it free. Lastly, in a +peroration which carried all before it, he pictured a community from +which the unendurable stain had been forever wiped away, the pitfalls +of its youth filled up, the shame of its prisons lightened--a community +ruled no longer by King Alcohol, but by the Genius of the Home, to +which freedom no longer stood for ribald license and self-harm, but for +the Common Good. + +He stopped amid a dense silence--the truest tribute to real +oratory--then with a great burst, the storm of approval came. + +It filled the hall with electric feeling, surging in waves that +overtopped all decorum and made the hour significant and momentous. +Near him Harry saw the party leaders, among them Judge Allen, +newly-elected President of the Civic Club; they showed a singular +self-assurance overlaid by vivid excitement. In the galleries were +banks of feminine faces, tier on tier, merged in a tumultuous +hand-clapping like silver rain. Below, the house was on its feet, a +sea of waving flags and handkerchiefs. + +The tumult swelled, then died away to pulsing band-music and in the +subsidence, Brent leaned over Harry's shoulder to give him the quick +pressure of a hand--words could not have said so much. + + +It was not until the convention had adjourned for an hour's recess that +Harry could escape from the congratulations that poured upon him where +he sat. While he spoke, the sense of mastery and domination had +possessed him; now he was feeling the inevitable revulsion, and with it +came the fading of his confidence and the relifting of the old +sickening question. + +It had surged back before the applause had died away, the moment he had +released his mind from the clamping resolution of his purpose, +springing upon him like a cunning enemy who had dogged him in the +shadow. His roseate speculations of the Bungalow seemed now but hollow +wraiths that had mocked him with an unrealisable promise. Could he +ever for a moment have cheated himself into forgetfulness of the +_impasse_ that lay there? + +With Brent beside him, he pushed his way to the foyer. There the press +was thickened and they were blocked in a corner by the stream of people +pouring from the galleries, from which position Harry found himself +nodding across to enthusiastic greetings of old acquaintances. + +"Good heavens!" fumed Brent, impatiently. "We'll never get out at this +rate. Let's try the other door." Harry turned with him, seeking a way +through the diminishing crowd. Then, abruptly he stopped. Near at +hand, her side-face turned toward him, was Echo. Her delicate colour +was heightened by an unwonted flush and her eyes shone softly under the +curling golden waves of her hair. + +Gazing in a confusion that was almost panic, Harry felt, with a burning +sense of helplessness and cowardice, the impossibility of his position. +The sight of her was like a cooling stream to a famished wanderer in +the desert. It called to him with a thousand voices, lifting before +him every sweet reminder of vanished things. She had not yet seen him, +and as the crowd swept her slowly closer, he felt to the full his own +blindness and egregious self-assurance that had made this plunge into +the old current seem possible. He watched her with a fascinated +intensity. She was speaking to some one beside her, her glance +wandering. It shifted, then was raised, as if by very attraction, to +his face. + +He saw recognition spring across it like a shaft of sunlight, as with a +quick impulse she started forward--then her arm caught itself, as it +were, half extended. He felt himself chill in every nerve, the air was +breathless. Mechanically his hand touched hers. + +"You have been gone a year," she said, in a low, uneven voice. + +Harry's very thought seemed suspended. "Is it--so long?" he answered. + +He scarcely knew what he said: the reply was a mere involuntary +expression of habit, a conventional phrase to fill the moment's need. +He could not know that the very repression with which he was holding +himself against the quick thrill of her touch made the words lifeless +and inconsequential. + +To Echo, however, in the tremulous gladness that had filled her at the +knowledge of his return, and the exaltation of the hour, the reply, +deserved as at heart she felt it to be, was like a blow in the face. A +startled paleness swept up her cheeks like a wave, blotting their hue +and misting the clear April of her eyes. She turned half-away, toward +her companion, and the next moment the eddying crowd had come between. + +On the hurrying pavement Brent dropped his hand on Sevier's shoulder. +"I'm not going to congratulate you," he said. "I'm going to +congratulate the new party. I'm off to the sanctum to write my +editorial while it's red hot. You'll come back for the other session, +I suppose. They're liable to nominate to-night." + +"No," replied Harry. "I must get away from the crowd somewhere." + +Brent caught the lassitude of his tone. "Better walk yourself tired," +he counselled, "and then turn in. You'll be all right to-morrow." + +They clasped hands and parted. + +For a time Sevier walked aimlessly, choosing the less frequented +thoroughfares, alone at last to think. He had done his best. Whether +or not it would accomplish what Brent had hoped, he had made the +strongest effort of which he was capable. The meeting with Echo had +shaken him by its very unexpectedness, and had shown him how bitterly +hard was to be his struggle with himself. In that instant of their +encounter he had realised his own weakness. + +Through the long, fading afternoon he walked on and on, past the +outskirts of the city, on into the peaceful willow-green quiet of the +country, where paved streets gave place to meandering red roads and the +air was sweet with the delicate fragrance of blossoming fruit-trees. +He sat an hour on the violet-blurred grass above the silver-looping +river where he had often fished as a boy. All his life he had loved +that gold-tinted, dream-shadowed valley. But now the soft wild clamour +of birds, the multifold perfume of the fields, the errant plum-petals +swimming in the breeze, the long-armed trees reaching out over the +darkling water, called to him in vain. He scarcely saw the far, blue, +hill-brushed horizon unfurl its pageant cloud-clusters to hide the sun, +where it hastened, in purple toga, to greet the soft-eyed night. + +What Spartan career had he been planning for himself? He loved her, +desired her, still. He realised it with a stab of self-contempt. And +loving her, could he see her day by day, meet her, talk with her--cold +and empty words meaning less than nothing--with his heart crying to +hers: "Thus far but no further! Because I loved you once I wear a +shameful brand on my forehead, but my arms may never enfold you, your +lips never lie on my lips, your heart beat against mine!--Never, never, +never!"--could flesh and blood be capable of this? Better to go, while +there was yet time, somewhere, anywhere, so it be out of her world. +Under the deep evening sky, a gulf of gold, he turned city-ward again, +still painfully absorbed with his thoughts--a dark tangle of anguish +and doubt and longing. + +As he neared his house speeding urchins were crying newspaper extras, +and more than once he heard his name in the shouted, dislocated +phrases. His speech! The swan's-song of Harry Sevier! + +He let himself into his apartment with his latch-key and wearily +switched on the lights. He suddenly remembered that he had eaten +nothing since noon and realised that he was wretchedly tired and spent. +A pencilled note, with the superscription in Brent's jerky hand, lay on +the table. He took it up and opened it. + +Then suddenly he gave an inarticulate cry of amaze--of actual fright. +He was staring at this message, written an hour before: + +_Anti-liquor plank adopted. You were nominated for Governor on the +first ballot at eight o'clock._ + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIX + +THE JAILBIRD + +To every man come portentous moments of decision so packed with fate +that all that his after life may hold of pain or joy, seen with the +clearer view of later knowledge, may well have hung upon the issue. +Harry's one greatest moment of crisis had been when he stood in the +doorway of Cameron Craig's house, with that midnight alarm pulsing +about him--when he had chosen the course that meant safety for Echo at +such bitter cost to himself. The moment when he confronted the blunt +fact of his nomination was wellnigh as significant. + +Such a possibility had never occurred to him. He saw himself now, +first with bewilderment, then with passionate resentment, in a +predicament as unprecedented as it was unescapable. He had not even +had the option of declining the nomination. By now his name, as the +new party's choice, was darting over the clicking wires to the remotest +borders of the country. How could he accept it? He, who might at any +hour, for all he knew, be faced with a charge from which (if, indeed, +flight still lay open) he must flee ignominiously, like a thief in the +night--which, in the eyes of the law, he was! Yet how evade the thing +thus thrust upon him? After his speech, in which he had championed the +new cause so ardently, could he throw ridicule upon the organisation, +make its leaders--men whom he had known and respected all his +life--laughing-stocks, throw doubt upon his own intentions, and make +his action of to-day show forth before all as a flamboyant bid for +popular applause, the gallery-appeal of a pitiful _flâneur_ and +attitudinarian, who had no mind to link himself with an inevitable +defeat at the polls? + +As Harry stood in the pleasant, lighted room, with Brent's pencilled +note in his hand, a strange thought obtruded itself to grow slowly over +his confused imaginings. Behind it all was there not the same wise +Intention whose outlines he had thought he distinguished in his bitter +prison experience? And was he, in faithless presumption, to deny that +over-rule, and vanish cavalierly into some sluggish back-current of +life? The same fate that had turned Paddy the Brick's pellet of lead +the single hair's-breadth that had saved him, perhaps, from the +scaffold, had rendered his enemy, at least for the present, incapable +of harming him. And this part of his problem belonged to the present. +Why had the cards so fallen, unless in that intricate Plan, it was +meant that he should now give his hand to this work? He had trusted +fate far--might he not trust it further? Though the party that had +called him to carry its standard into the fight was destined to +failure, it was working for the future, and some other campaign--long +after the worst that could befall had come to him--would bring its +principles success. He would have done his part! + +So, for good or ill to himself, Harry made his momentous decision, and +as if it had been a signal, at the same instant there came the quick, +insistent ringing of the telephone on his desk. + + +The next few days were days of ungrudging labour on Harry's part of +conferences with the state leaders--for Brent's prophecy had been +fulfilled and Good-Government Clubs throughout the state had placed +their local machinery in the new party's control. These earlier +meetings were, for the most part, in Harry's own apartment, or in the +library of Midfields, since Judge Allen was chairman of the Committee +on Organisation. On none of these latter occasions had he seen Echo, +nor, to his relief, had he met her elsewhere. He gave himself no +relaxation, bending all the energies of his reawakened being to the +task of detail, and the mapping out of the campaign which he was +entering. Whatever his apprehension and trepidation, he had learned +his real weight in the hour of his great speech and the sense of power, +linked with extraordinary and tangible opportunity, thrilled and +dominated him. + +There came an evening, however, after a day of more than usual +concentration, when he felt that he must relax. He had dined at the +hotel with some of the party's out-of-town lieutenants, but excused +himself early and chose to dismiss his motor and to walk home afoot, +craving the lightness and gaiety of the jostling streets and gleaming +windows. + +Presently he found himself passing a theatre-front and remembered that +Brent had pressed him to make one of a box-party there that same +evening. At the time he had left the matter open, pleading the dinner +engagement, but now it occurred to him suddenly that an hour of lights +and music would be welcome. It was the intermission after the first +act and men were flocking into the doors, chatting and laughing. The +spirit of frivolity attracted him and he entered with the rest. + +The orchestra was playing--a Bohemian medley of uneven harmonies and +wildly plaintive alternations, strung, as on a thread, on the +airily-fantastic _motif_ of Dvorak's _Humoresque_, and the pirouetting +music seemed to belong to the flippant and shallow yet alluring +interior, with its plenteous gold-leaf and dark blue draperies +embroidered in peacock-feathers--the breath of a life of laughter, of +careless amusement, of joy in the present. Harry felt his spirits lift +and lighten at the grateful slackening of tension which the _mise en +scene_ created, and he bowed and smiled easily when the audience +testified its recognition, as he followed the attendant along the side +wall, by a hushed hand-clapping which ran across the rows of seats. + +With his hand parting the rear curtains of the box, however, he halted +irresolutely--its occupants were Mrs. Spottiswoode, Brent, Lawrence +Treadwell and Echo. For an instant resentment stirred in him; he +guessed that Brent, albeit with the best intentions in the world, had +planned this meeting. Then he squared his shoulders and entered. In +another moment he had greeted Mrs. Spottiswoode and was bowing over +Echo's hand. + +The men had risen. "Here is the Candidate!" exclaimed Brent, laughing. +"Mrs. Spottiswoode was just about to make me a wager that you wouldn't +descend to such triviality." + +Pretty Mrs. Spottiswoode smiled as she closed her fan. "If I had, I +shouldn't begrudge the loss," she said. "You've missed the first act, +Mr. Sevier, but then openings are always dull, aren't they?" Treadwell +shook hands with him with frank friendliness. Politically he belonged +to the party in power, but his liking for Harry was sincere and of +long-standing. + +The lights in the house were fading and the orchestra had swung into a +soft and measured air. The rustle and chatter among the seats stilled: +the curtain was rising. After the few words of greeting, Harry dropped +into the vacant chair behind Echo's, in the rear of the enclosure. He +had a feeling that again a satiric chance had snatched the reins of +conduct from his hands. His unseeing gaze was set upon the crowded +tiers beneath, but he was conscious of nothing but that small, +delicately-shaped head like one in a Greek frieze, that clear-cut +profile softly tinged by the dim rose-lamps of the box, the clasped, +unringed hands, the lacy sweep of the pale evening-dress silhouetted +against the curtain. Beyond the range of his vision manikins came and +went upon the stage, speaking meaningless words. At the other side of +the box Mrs. Spottiswoode was whispering some humorous adventure to +Treadwell and Brent, whose heads were bent toward her. Everything else +seemed unreal and far-away, and he and Echo the only realities in a +chapter of banality. + +He became conscious all at once that her head was turned toward him, +and as though by magnetic compulsion his own eyes looked into hers. + +"I want to say something to you." The words were the merest whisper on +her parted lips, yet he heard. He drew his chair nearer till his bent +head was at her shoulder. "Yes," he said. + +Her lips trembled, but she spoke in a clear undertone, audible only to +him, which faltered the merest trifle: + +"I don't know whether--now--it makes any difference to you," she said. +"But I--I was not myself when I--wrote you that note, the day you--went +away. There was a reason why I--acted as I did. You--" + +The low voice failed. There had been in the hesitant words failing +pride and shame, mingled with the love that had been so long denied--a +revelation which welled from the pure, outspoken honesty of heart that +compelled it, demanding, at all odds, so far as he was concerned, +openness and understanding. The shaken voice, the tremulous lips, the +moon-soft fire of her eyes and the faint scent of her clothing, all the +sweet suggestions of her presence were crying aloud to Harry, tempting +him with a vision of promise. What if she had failed him--then? What +if that courage he had dreamed, put to the touch, had shown but +cowardice, that love of him a secondary thing to her? She was what he +wanted--to yield himself to her arms as a swimmer to the sea! As much +as she loved any one--save herself--she loved him! Was not a half loaf +better than no bread? The icy barrier of reserve which he had reared +crumbled down, and he felt the thing he had tried to imprison leap up, +savage and not to be denied. His groping hand went out and touched her +arm. + +"Echo!" he whispered hoarsely. "Echo--" + +His voice died in his throat. Her hands in her lap held the theatrical +programme, and words in heavy black-letter--the title of the +piece--were staring up at him from the white paper-- + + THE JAILBIRD + +In the shadow, he felt his limbs suddenly trembling. With a kind of +fascination his gaze, for the first time since his entrance, lifted to +the stage. + +It was set as a long flagged corridor of vertical steel bars, into +which doors were let at regular intervals, and behind each door showed +a bare, forbidding room, furnished with two iron cots, one above the +other, and two wooden stools. As he gazed in consternation, a bell +clangored and along the corridor came tramping a line of men clad in +dingy stripes, pallid face close to shabby shoulder, one knee rising +and falling to the damnable rhythm of the prison lock-step. + +Harry felt an algid chill creep over him. He sat upright, his whole +body rigid, each detail of the significant picture stamping itself upon +his quivering perception. Midway of the line a turnkey unlocked a door +in the barred wall and two links of the human chain detached themselves +and entered--one stooped and crafty and cringing; the other clean-cut +and erect with no stamp of vice upon his face. The clanging bolt shot +home, the line moved off. Then, in the silence of the house the comely +figure leaned against the bars, and John Stark's voice--or was it his, +Harry Sevier's?--cried in broken agony: + +"And I am innocent--innocent!" + + +As the curtain descended on the act, amid a crash of orchestral music, +Mrs. Spottiswoode turned to Harry with a little shrug. + +"It _is_ moving, really, isn't it? But how _terribly_ unnatural! Of +course in real life nothing like that could happen to an innocent man. +What do you think, Mr. Treadwell?" + +But Treadwell did not answer at once. He had turned in surprise to the +rear of the box, where a youth in a grey silver-buttoned uniform had +parted the curtains. The messenger was looking at Brent, who rose and +went to him. + +"I beg pardon, sir," the boy said in a low voice, "but they told me at +the box-office you were here. Will you please come over to the club? +Something is the matter. Perhaps Mr. Sevier will come too." + +Brent looked at him--there was agitation in the youthful face. He +turned. + +"Will you ladies excuse Sevier and me for a few minutes?" he said. "I +dare say we shall be back before the curtain goes up again." + +At the words Harry had risen also, with a quick relief at this summons, +whatever it was, that offered the instant escape. Though his bow took +in Echo, he did not look at her, as turning, he followed Brent quickly +from the box. + + + + +CHAPTER XL + +GENTLEMEN ALL + +Chisholm Allen had come to the end of a long tether. He was drunk. +Not with the amiable jollity of the youthful tippler, nor with the +heavy, fatuous oblivion of the sot, but with the drunkenness that marks +the vicious rebellion of the nerve-cell against the prolonged +excitation of an intoxicant--the dreadful revenge wherein the outraged +brain summons the distorted imagination to fill the victim's landscape +with uncouth and demoniacal visitants. + +For a long fortnight, at the Springs, with a couple of cronies, he had +defied convention and strained the tolerance, which had countenanced +past escapades because he was an Allen, to the breaking-point. Only +when revelry had sunken to deep debauch had friends been able to bring +him to the city, where he had been bestowed in a room at the club to +await returning soberness. That night, however, when the friendly +guard had relaxed, Chilly had awakened to horrid visions. At first he +had known them for creations of his drunken fantasy, but they had +multiplied in numbers and horror till they had broken down the frail +bulwark of remaining reason and obsessed him with the sense of +reality--uncanny nightmares from some formless abysm, shuddering +mistakes of nature, mingling in a monstrous extravaganza that crowded +about to menace him. + +With a scream Chilly burst from the room and ran along an upper +corridor to the brightly-lighted reading-room. It was deserted at that +hour--but not for him, for the visitants from which he fled pursued him +there! They ringed him about, clutching at him. Livid and shaking, he +seized a heavy iron poker from the hearth and crouching in a corner, +beat off the imaginary assailants. + +It was upon this spectacle that the agitated steward had come, called +by a frightened bell-boy, and as the theatre stood opposite, he had +hastily sent thither, as the likeliest spot in which to find some +_habitué_ of the Club who might assume charge of the situation. + +Two other club-members stood nonplussed and disconcerted on the +threshold of the room when Harry Sevier and Brent entered, with the +steward behind them. In the livid face of the boy at bay, the staring +distempered eyes, the gripped, impromptu weapon, Harry read the fact. +He spoke to him soothingly, but the frenzied brain did not recognise +him. To Chilly's imagination the friendly, familiar faces took on the +baleful character of the gibbering things by which he was beset. He +sprang up, slashing frantically with the iron, panting +indistinguishable words. Thus for a moment the writhing images fell +back--only one of the iron lizards that formed the andirons suddenly +came to life and on bat's-wings soared to a great marble bust that sat +on a shelf above the fireplace, where it perched and spat down at him. + +Chilly leaped up at it, dealing it blow after blow with the poker--then +laughed wildly to see it suddenly waver and topple forward. So it +seemed to him, but an exclamation of dismayed warning broke from +Harry's lips; it was the heavy marble itself, its too frail support +shattered by the attack, which was falling. He sprang forward. + +But he reached the spot too late. The great bust came crashing from +its height full upon Chilly's breast, and with a choked cry he went +down beneath it. + +The others rushed to him and between them the massive stone was lifted +from the broken body. "Call up a doctor," Harry ordered the steward. +"Get the nearest--tell him to hurry; Mr. Allen is badly hurt." To the +rest he said, "Nothing must be known, as to how this happened, outside +this room. It was an accident, remember, nothing more. The shelf was +weak and the bust fell." + +When the doctor came in, the crushed form lay upon a couch hastily +improvised from chair-cushions. Blood was welling from the pale lips. +He made a hasty examination, then looked up and shook his head. + +"Better fetch his father and mother," he said, "and as quickly as +possible." + +"I will go," volunteered Brent. "My car is at the theatre. I can do +it in twenty minutes." He went out quickly, while the man of medicine +opened his case and busied himself with restoratives. + +To Harry, who stood watching with the others, it seemed that these were +to be of no avail, but after a sensible interval Chilly opened his +eyes. He gazed at the professional face so near--at the other shocked +countenances grouped about. He saw the bust lying on its side. + +"I'm--sober now," he gasped. "I was--seeing things, eh? But I seem to +be--hurt. What's the matter?" + +"The marble fell and struck you," said Harry. + +A spasm of pain caught Chilly and he groaned. "I remember," he said, +and then, after a pause, "Am I--badly off?" + +"I'm afraid so," said the doctor. + +The pity in the tone conveyed its message. A tremor ran over Chilly's +face. There was a long moment's silence. + +"Have I--much time?" + +"Not very much," answered the other gently. + +Chilly caught a breath that was half a sob. "Poor little Nancy!" he +whispered. + +He looked up at the men who stood about him, "I would like--" he said, +hesitatingly but clearly, "I would be glad if some--explanation might +be made of this--occurrence--which would not involve unnecessary pain +to the Duchess. Perhaps that is--impossible. But I would--be +grateful--" + +One of the younger men leaned beside him. It was Lee Carter, his +closest friend, who had brought him that afternoon from the Springs. +"Dear old chap!" he said, brokenly. "I was standing just under it. +You saw it topple and jumped to save me! That is how it happened! +Every one of us saw it." + +A wan smile touched the whitening lips, "Gentlemen all!" said Chilly, +and closed his eyes. + +He lay silent then--he was breathing with increasing difficulty. At +length there was the sound of a motor halting outside, and Harry and +the rest went out. + +In the quiet of the room the door opened upon Judge and Mrs. Allen. +She was deadly pale, her face frozen with anguish. She knelt beside +the prostrate figure and took the cold hand of her son in hers. + +"Chilly!" she cried. "My poor, poor boy!" + +His eyes opened. He seemed, in that last fading instant, to see only +her. "Duchess!" he whispered, and with the word the light died in his +face. "Duchess!" + + +Mrs. Allen looked at the Judge's quivering countenance with dull blank +eyes, that saw two great tears suddenly detach themselves and roll down +his pale cheeks. He took a step toward her. + +"Charlotte--" he stammered. "Charlotte!" + +There was in the shaking voice something that pierced her agony, a tone +that she had not heard on his lips for many, many long years--an echo +of accents that she had known when she was a bride. She gazed at him +an instant voicelessly. + +Then all at once her face broke up and a wild cry tore itself upward +from her heart. It was not the voice now of cold and placid scorn, but +that of the real woman--the eternal voice of Rachel weeping for her +children. The sword of overwhelming tragedy had stripped off the +protecting cicatrice of pride and arrogant resentment and bared the +lonely soul beneath, that in this shuddering instant groped wildly for +human comfort. + +The Judge bent down and clasped her, and there, above the body of +Chilly, for the first time since the son who lay dead before them had +been born, she lay in her husband's arms, her face turned against his +breast. + + + + +CHAPTER XLI + +DARK DAYS + +"If I only knew!" That was Echo's mental cry in the long days that +followed Chilly's burial. "If I only knew whether Harry cared for me +any longer!" Sharp as was her grief for her brother, this pang was the +sharper, and it did not dull with time. + +After the meeting in the corridor of the Convention Hall, when the +barrier had risen, so icily cold, between them, she had been unable to +blame him. The very depth of his hurt and resentment only showed her +how much he had once cared, and she had longed fiercely for an +opportunity of speech with him, which, it seemed to her, must set all +right. This opportunity she had discerned in Brent's invitation to the +theatre, since he had let fall that he had asked Harry also. She had +known the character of the play to be presented and otherwise would +have shrunk from the painful memories it must evoke, even though her +personal dread had been exercised by the escape from prison of the +convict from whose plight had come her own pain of conscience. But the +possibility of Harry's presence had outweighed other considerations. +In that moment in the box, when his lips had spoken her name, when she +had felt his hand tremble against her arm, the ice had seemed about to +melt in understanding. For an instant her heart had leaped up with +glad certainty, only to drop to anguished slowness again at his sudden +stricken silence. + +"If I only knew!" Through the months of the early summer the question +sat incarnate by Echo's side. By night and by day it never left her. +She had no confidant, could have none. From this trouble her father +himself was barred. It was some relief that she had no longer to wear +a smiling motley, but could give her grief free rein, and there were +times when she wept till the very fount of her tears seemed to be +exhausted--when it seemed to her that all her life was darkened and her +love lay stark with its death-tapers licking the gloom. + +As time wore on, and her father threw himself again into the work of +the political campaign, she was mentally more alone than ever. There +were few of those old hours when she had been used to sit with him in +the dusky library; for this room had become, gradually, the habitual +meeting-place of the leaders, the clearing-house of county news, the +forum in which were discussed and decided the varying policies of the +struggle. Occasionally Harry took part in these gatherings--not often, +for he was now away during long periods, speaking in various parts of +the state. By the newspapers Echo followed his every step. He made no +speech that she did not read with eagerness and pride. She knew that +he was making a whirlwind campaign that had steadily increased in +vigour and effect as the day of election drew nearer, and that, however +the issues might fall, he was stamping his individuality deeply upon a +wide community. She thrilled with the thought of his success, and in +the unselfishness of her love, this was some recompense. + +She found a kind of comfort, too, in the realisation that the relations +of her father and mother had subtly altered. In her whole life she had +never witnessed the smallest discourtesy of word or deed between them, +yet there was now a positive element in their intercourse which she had +never distinguished. Often now they sat together as the Judge wrote or +scanned his reports, sometimes he discussed with his wife the phases of +the political situation and once--with what Echo realised afterward was +almost a guilty start--she had come upon them sitting in the lamplight +hand in hand. She had turned away to discover that her eyes had +unaccountably filled with tears. + +Most of all that sustained her spirits in this period were her talks +with Brent. Trained newspaperman and observer as he was, he had thrown +himself into the battle with all ardour. Day after day, in trenchant +editorials, he preached the Gospel of the new party, and many times he +swung his long legs down the Avenue for a cup of tea at Midfields. His +admiration for the fight Harry was making was immense and he found in +Echo a perfect listener, sympathetic and comprehending. + +And so the months passed till there remained but a fortnight before +election day, and so deeply had Echo's imagination entered into the +great issue, so intimately were all her thoughts engaged with Harry's +tangible success, that even the dread of Craig's recovery, even the +pain and puzzle of her heart, were thrust into the background. + +That evening she sat at the piano in the drawing-room, her fingers +wandering in long dreamy _arpeggios_, when her maid brought her a +letter. It was from Nancy Eveland. She opened and read it through, to +the postscript on the last page: + + +"The evening papers have a telegram from Buda-Pesth about Mr. Craig. +He left the hospital there yesterday. The operation was completely +successful." + + +She sat for some minutes with the paper held tight in her hand, with a +weird feeling that it was a warning, and when she tried again to play +her fingers stumbled into discord. + +It was long before she slept that night, and then the fear swooped upon +her in her dreaming. She thought it was her wedding-day and that she +was pacing up a church aisle, over rose-leaves red as blood strewn with +seed-pearls that had been her tears. Turned toward her were the faces +of her father and mother, of Chilly and of a myriad friends, who filled +every pew. At the altar Harry was standing waiting for her. But every +countenance wore a look of astonishment and trepidation, and she knew +that it was because the gown she was wearing was not white but black, +and her bride's veil of black crêpe. This, however, had been necessary +because she had wished that Craig would die, and the wish had somehow +brought his death about. She thought she tried to explain this, in a +whisper, to Harry, but he shrank from her. She turned to the rector, +who had been ready, but as she looked at him, he took off his surplice +and dashed it on the floor, and she saw that he was really Craig +himself. Then the organ crashed and lights flared up about her and +Harry vanished and all that was left was Craig's face, sneering at her, +with a red blotch on his temple. + +She awoke in the darkness with a start, trembling in every limb--to +hear a lone hound howling from the stable. + + + + +CHAPTER XLII + +THE MENDED ROAD + +Dr. Ivany, the great Hungarian specialist, adept in the delicate +adventurings of brain surgery, ceased his examination and refastened +the light bandage upon his patient's head with a look of satisfaction. + +"But yes," he said, in his concise French, "it goes well. I release +you from my care, Monsieur. One thing, however, you must remember. No +excitation. No anger. No prolonged mental labour for some months to +come. Otherwise--the tiniest hemorrhage in the affected area--and all +my surgery could not undo the damage again." + +The spruce young secretary who stood at Craig's side translated. + +"All right," said Craig. "Tell him I'm much obliged." He shook hands +with the great man without emotion, and when the door had closed upon +the latter he got upon his feet. "Have you arranged the rooms at the +hotel?" + +"Yes, sir." + +"Then get me out of here. The sooner the better." + +A half hour later he was in a suite of the hotel. "Now bring me the +home papers," he commanded. + +"To-day, sir?" ventured the secretary. "Do you think you are strong +enough so soon--" + +"Do as I tell you," was the curt reply. "I was shot on the ninth of +May, last year. I want to begin with the tenth, and I want all of +them!" + +The secretary went into the adjoining room, to return presently with a +file of newspapers, stitched neatly together, their columns marked here +and there in blue-pencil. He laid the great tome down on the table. + +"That's all now," said Craig. "I'll call when I want you again. I'll +dine here." + +Alone, he drew a long breath. Then he set his teeth and a peculiar +expression came to his face. A year, and more, had been snatched from +his life--this had been told him when it had been evident that the +operation had restored his faculties unimpaired, and as soon as he had +recovered sufficient strength. Beyond this, however, he had been told +nothing: on this score the surgical authority had been adamant. So, +for weeks, denied even the presence of his secretary, he had been +constrained, albeit impatiently, to subsist on the merest assurances +cabled him from day to day that the interests which had been in his +charge were adequately cared for, and to compel his stubborn resolution +to patience. Now the embargo had been lifted; he was once more his own +master. And before him, in black and white, lay the record of that +vanished time, which to him was but a meaningless void thronged with +vague and inchoate images, the story of the ignominy and downfall of +the man who had tricked him and robbed him of the woman he desired! +The blood rose in his temples. His lips drew up from his clenched +teeth and his fingers twitched as he reached for the newspapers. + +There it was, the episode that excluded all else from his thought, the +sensational headlines running half across the front page--the story, +pieced together by the assiduous reportorial pencil, of the burglars +and the shooting, the unknown feminine visitor who had disappeared in +the confusion leaving no clue behind her, the arrest of the single +desperado, closing with the latter's confrontation with Craig himself. +An exclamation of satisfaction fell from his lips. He had said to Echo +that there lived no man who could say that he had lied--a boast that +had had a shameful aftermath. Yet he felt now no shade of remorse for +the black perjury that had fastened the attempted murder upon Harry +Sevier. Rather he felt disappointed that consciousness had failed him +a moment too soon, so that his own lips had not placarded the other to +his face. That joy had been denied him. + +He turned the leaves, searching avidly for the headlines which should +have flung broadcast the startling identification. The events of the +great world, the larger happenings that had plunged two Balkan States +into war and overturned a British Ministry, the loss of a great ocean +liner--even a senatorial inquiry into the methods of the Distillery +Trust--held no interest for him at this moment. His brain had linked +onto the past where it had dropped it, and the empty gulf had laid no +cooling fingers on his burning craving for revenge. + +But the thing he sought was not there. "_Prisoner Refuses to Make Any +Statement_"--"_Criminal Unknown to Police_"--"_Sticks Stubbornly to +Policy of Silence_"--as he read, a dull flush overspread his face. +Fools! Was it possible that he--Harry Sevier--known to a thousand folk +of a city a couple of hundreds of miles away, could hoodwink the police +by the silly subterfuge of a newly-shaven chin? The papers shook in +his vengeful clutch as he turned and turned, conning the progress of +the trial. It ended with the conviction and the sentence; thereafter +the headlines told of things of fresher public interest. + +For a long time Craig sat perfectly still, staring into the grate whose +fire-light danced in yellow shadows on the wall, with the page open on +his knees. He had won the first trick, and Harry Sevier had played his +lone trump of silence. But what of that? He was a jail-bird, chained +to a cell for twenty years. His absence from home would long ago have +raised a question, which in the end must become insistent. He, Cameron +Craig, could answer that question! His lips curved in a cruel smile. +And Echo? She had profited by the situation--Harry had borne the brunt. + +Her lover! A sinistrous rage caught him as he repeated the word to +himself. No softer thought of her now lurked in the bitter chambers of +his mind. She had mocked and fooled him and he hated her with the +still, cold hatred which the strong and evil man feels for the weaker +thing that defies him. Yet so far as she was concerned he was +helpless. He could not deny his declaration that he had not known the +woman in the library. Life was long and he knew the penalty that in +the south awaited the man who wantonly attacked the character of a +woman. All facts aside, his sober judgment told him that the act would +bar against him every social door that now stood open. + +But Harry Sevier was another thing. Harry Sevier, thief and +house-breaker? Harry Sevier, a midnight assassin? Harry Sevier, the +nameless convict in the State's Penitentiary? What a story! Fate held +its compensations, after all. Now he would be able to figure, first +hand, in the sensation that he should send sweeping over the south like +a lurid flame! + +He rose and set the newspapers on the table, parting the leaves further +along, now that his main craving had been satisfied catching glimpses +of other things: movements in the business world, and the new political +alignment, the danger of which, to the interests with which he was +identified, he had long ago discerned. So the Civic Club following had +become a full-fledged party now--was reaching out toward a state-wide +organisation! + +Suddenly his gaze fixed itself and he bent over the page staring +unbelievingly. A hoarse ejaculation broke from him. What he saw was +the line, in inch-high letters-- + + HENRY SEVIER FOR GOVERNOR! + + +He snatched up the file again and held it to the light. There was no +mistake! Three months ago, while he had lain inert in the hospital +above the river, the man he imagined the occupant of a prison-cell had +been nominated for the highest office in the Commonwealth, the +standard-bearer of the New Ideal! + +For an instant a keen trepidation darted through him. His hand went up +and touched the bandage. Could it be that he was--not himself? Was +what he had imagined only the figment of a brain astray? With a fierce +effort at self-control he sat down and beginning at the date at which +he had left off his reading, began to scan the columns carefully and +methodically, missing nothing. + +For two hours he did this, and at length he came upon a paragraph at +which his lowering face lightened with exultation. It chronicled in a +dozen words the escape from the Penitentiary of the convict who was +under imprisonment for the burglary of the Craig mansion and the +shooting of its owner. The circle of evidence closed up. He was +certain, now. + +Craig laughed out loud, a grating laugh of sardonic amusement. Again +the cards had fallen Harry Sevier's way. By some lucky chance he had +freed himself, and with the effrontery of supposed security had resumed +his old place and character, no one the wiser. Now he was actually +running for Governor! Well, the higher the pinnacle the more +spectacular the fall! The game was his, Craig's, for he held the +highest trump! + +He rang for his secretary. + +"Bring me the steamer-lists," he said, "and have the servants pack my +things. We are going to leave on the Nord-Express at midnight." + + + + +CHAPTER XLIII + +THE PITFALL + +"So you think it incredible, then!" + +Lawrence Treadwell's glance at Craig was veiled as he replied, dryly: + +"I am considering the evidence as you present it, that's all. This, it +seems to me, is what it amounts to: Mr. Henry Sevier, a reputable +citizen and a well known resident of this place, a year ago leaves for +a vacation." + +"In disguise," interrupted Craig. + +Treadwell shook his head. "There is no evidence of that--it is mere +allegation. He was seen here late one afternoon, as usual. There +could be no mistake, for he's a characteristic enough individual. He +had arranged for the closing of his office, had told his clerk, in +fact, that he was going abroad. The same night, at midnight in your +own house--two hundred miles away and in another state--a man is +arrested, one of a gang of burglars. There were all the usual +earmarks--open safe, black mask, an attempt at escape, with the +shooting of yourself thrown in." + +"I identified him an hour later, as soon as I regained consciousness." + +"As the man who had shot you--yes. Your identification went no further +at that time. And since then you have been able to give no evidence." + +"Until now," said Craig grimly. + +"The burglar," pursued Treadwell, "is tried. He is unknown to the +local police. He refuses to tell his name. Naturally! He has served +time before and has no hankering for a life-sentence under the +'habitual-criminal' act. He is sentenced to twenty years. After a +period of incarceration, he escapes, as jail-birds will, and is not +apprehended. Some months afterward, Mr. Henry Sevier returns from his +vacation and resumes his popular career. He is just now in the public +eye--very much so, indeed. Do you seriously believe a claim that the +two men are identical will hold water?" + +Craig had been staring at him from under his shaggy brows. Anger was +seething in his brain at the suspicion he felt was lurking behind the +other's matter-of-fact logic. "Then you believe I am the victim of +hallucination?" he asked, with forced calmness. + +"Frankly," said Treadwell, "I think for you to allege such a thing +openly would, at the very least, make you seem ridiculous. Man, don't +you see? You've had a shock--a brain injury. You've been through a +long period of mental illness, culminating in a major operation! Don't +you realise--" + +Craig struck his fist upon the table and his teeth snapped together. +"Look here, Treadwell," he flamed, "I'm as sane as you are, and you +know it!" + +"Of course, of course," agreed the other, in a mollifying tone. "But +why not let the matter rest awhile? Go down for a month to Old Point +and build up--" + +Craig's face turned livid. He got up, and lifted one clenched fist in +the air. + +"Think what you like!" he said, venomously. "Do you suppose I care +what any one thinks? I'll show you whether I'm right or not!" His +voice rose. "I'll drag him in the mud! Every man and woman in these +two states--yes, and in a dozen more!--shall know him for a scoundrel +and a robber! He dares to run for Governor, does he? The drunken +_poseur_! The damned hypocrite! He shall be jail-bird again and once +for all, when I am through with him! He shall lie and rot with a chain +and ball on his leg! He--" + +He stopped. A needled stab of pain had darted, like a bee's sting, +through his brow, beneath the bandage, and there flashed to him +suddenly the warning of the surgeon, on the day he had left the +hospital in Buda-Pesth: "...the tiniest hemorrhage in the affected area +and all my surgery could not undo--" + +He stood still an instant, breathing heavily. Then he caught up his +hat and turned to the door. + +Treadwell was looking at him curiously. The outburst had tended to +reinforce the suspicion that had already come to him as to the other's +mental condition. "What do you intend to do?" he asked. + +"I am going to the Penitentiary, the physical record of the prisoner is +there. I shall have it when I come back. I presume you would call +that evidence?" + +"The best--if the measurements proved identical with Sevier's. I +daresay he would be willing to submit to the test," Treadwell added, +thoughtfully. "--And then?" + +"The election is day after to-morrow. I shall wait till the polls have +closed, naturally, before I show him up. A convict, or one who has +served a penal term, under the state constitution, can hold no office +of public trust. I am advised that the new ticket is likely to win. +The Trust's candidate will be next in the running, and with Sevier out, +must be declared elected. Where will Sevier receive the returns?" + +"At Midfields, I imagine," Treadwell replied. "It's the committee +headquarters. Governor Eveland of your State is to be a guest there, I +hear. He's very much interested in this campaign, being something of a +reformer himself." + +"So much the better! The Governor himself shall ask for the warrant +for Sevier's arrest. We will go there that evening." + +"We!" repeated Treadwell. + +"Yes. You will come with me--as my attorney." + +"But I don't approve the step!" protested the other. "I consider the +whole affair preposterous!" + +"I am under the impression," retorted Craig, darkly, "that you are +still under my retainer--not Sevier's." + +Treadwell flushed. "If you put it in that way," he said stiffly, "I +shall of course accompany you. But you have my legal opinion." + +Craig jerked the door open. + +"I'll meet you at Midfields at eight that evening," he said. + + + + +CHAPTER XLIV + +THE LIGHTED FUSE + +In the Warden's office at the Penitentiary next morning--the same room +Harry Sevier had entered when he had first stepped under the gloomy +prison archway--Craig stood staring out of the open window across the +yellow courtyard. The last move in the game was at hand--the game he +had made up his mind now to play out alone, to the last card. + +He had not taken the Warden into his confidence, though he had sat +talking with him for a half hour. From him he had heard the tale of +the escape of prisoner No. 239--a tender subject with the official, but +one in which his influential visitor had exhibited a particular +interest. To the Warden the latter's concern for a scoundrel who had +come within an ace of murdering him seemed natural enough. It would be +in keeping with Craig's determined and vindictive character to exhaust +every effort to apprehend the fugitive. To some intention of this sort +the Warden had laid his caller's further inquiries concerning the +pickpocket who had been the missing man's cell-mate. + +Craig, however, had had reason of another sort. It had chagrined him +to learn that with the prisoner had disappeared the record-card on +which he had counted as a piece of tangible evidence. But this was not +an essential, since, once denounced, Harry Sevier would be put upon the +defensive, and the one conclusive and natural defence--an alibi--he +could not furnish. In the meantime, however, the sensational +accusation should be supported, and what more to this purpose than the +convict who had shared No. 239's very cell? Promise of a pardon--he +could arrange that with the Board--would make the fellow tractable, and +he could take him with him on parole. + +The plan in his mind had leaped into action. He had expressed a wish +to talk with Paddy the Brick and the Warden had sent for him. Craig +was waiting the man's coming now, as he stood looking across the yard +toward the vast round dormitory that tossed back the rumble of the +toiling shops. There was an evil gloating in the fixed, speculative +eyes--in imagination Craig was seeing Harry Sevier once more a denizen +of that dismal place, a felon, and irrevocably shamed now in name and +fame. + +The door opened and a turnkey entered, a figure in striped clothes with +him. + +"Here's your man, Mr. Craig," said the Warden. + +Craig turned from the window and set his eyes on Paddy the Brick. He +gave a sudden start which the Warden, who had crossed to his desk and +was searching in its pigeon-holes, did not see. Paddy the Brick shrank +back, and a quick gleam of fear ran across his pallid features. For +each--the would-be murderer and the man he had shot--in the self-same +instant recognised the other. + +At the fierce anger that blazed in Craig's face Paddy the Brick drew +further back, his eyes darting from the man by the window to the Warden +and back again, and his hand went instinctively out to the table to +clutch a heavy, brass-edged ruler the only weapon at hand. It seemed +at the instant that the other was about to leap upon him, to kill him +with his working hands. But Craig recovered himself in time. He +looked at the Warden. + +"I should like to talk with him alone," he said, "if that is +permissible." + +"Certainly," the Warden answered. "As long as you like," and left the +room with the paper he had been looking for. + +As the door closed, Craig bent a long look upon the man who stood +there. "Don't be a fool," he said. "Put that thing down. I'm not +going to hurt you. I want to ask you some questions." + +Paddy the Brick laid the ruler down, but he kept the table between them. + +"Did you know who the man was who broke into my house with you--the one +who was caught?" + +The other looked at him cunningly. "The one you swore shot you?" + +Craig's fingers twitched. "Yes," he said, after a pause. + +"No. I never saw him before that night." + +"What did he pay you for that job?" + +Paddy the Brick stared. "Good Lord! _He_ wasn't one of us. He just +happened in for a social call!" He leaned across the table. "Say," he +whispered, "what did you want to hang him for?" + +There was in the posture, the whisper, an inexpressible assumption of +identity of interest which stung and galled the man who faced him. The +blood welled into Craig's face, then very slowly ebbed. + +"Would you know him again, if he had changed his appearance? If, for +instance, he wore a beard?" + +"Know him!" Paddy the Brick jerked his thumb toward the window. "Why, +we was mates over there." + +Craig looked at him steadily for a moment without speaking. Then he +pointed to a chair. + +"Sit down," he said. + + +At midnight that night the home city of Harry Sevier was ablaze with +lights and throbbing with the last feverish activity of a strenuous +campaign. The candidate of the new party had returned that afternoon +from a tour of the southern portion of the state, and plenteous +bunting, everywhere displayed, testified to an enthusiasm that, +carefully fostered by his lieutenants, had permeated every section and +class. That evening, to ring down the curtain with a brilliant +_finale_, a torchlight procession had been organised. Ten thousand +strong, the blazing flambeaux had marched and countermarched along the +city's main thoroughfares, and Harry had reviewed them from the balcony +of the hotel which was the party's _rendezvous_. + +He had flung himself into the fight with every ounce of his splendid +vitality which had been deepened and strengthened by the months of +mountain solitude. There was infinitely more at issue now than he had +dreamed when he canvassed chances at the bungalow. The cause of the +new party had then seemed inevitably a losing one. But during that +long campaign--particularly in the last few weeks--it had been borne in +upon him that the time had been ripe for the venture. Long arrogance +and effrontery had borne their legitimate fruit in a profound +resentment that had been fanned to vivid life by the quickening breath. +There had been an erasure of old lines, and at length the party in +power, aroused and desperate, had found itself fighting for its life. +There were no odds offered that day on its victory! Once committed, +however, there had been no turning back possible. Harry's bridges had +been burned behind him. He could only go forward, and, fighting on, he +had striven to thrust his problem, with its increasing implications, +into the background of his mind. And in spite of himself the zest of +victory had absorbed him. To-night's parade had been an inspiring +spectacle and it had called from him the last speech of the campaign. + +As he closed, amid the shouting and applause, a motor drew up at the +curb and stopped just before the hotel entrance. On its fear seat, +shielded from the gaze of the pavement by the leather hood, was Cameron +Craig, and beside the chauffeur sat Paddy the Brick. + +The crowds thinned, began to melt away; here and there the golden +square of a window went black on the quieting street. Still the car +made no move. At length a little knot of men issued from the hotel +lobby, pausing in the lighted doorway to say good night to one another. +Craig leaned forward. + +"The one in the centre," he said, in a low voice. "The one with the +beard." + +As he spoke, Harry Sevier's look crossed the pavement and met squarely +Craig's envenomed gaze. He saw the heavy head thrust forward from the +hood, with the white bandage across the temple and under it the +smouldering, implacable eyes. For a space that seemed interminable the +eyes held each other. A ghastly expression crossed his face. Very +slowly he turned and re-entered the lobby. + +Brent, who was the last to leave him, looked at him anxiously. + +"You're about all in," he said. "You look positively ill." + +Harry tried to smile. + +"It's nothing. I think I'll rest now." His voice had all at once lost +its _timbre_, had become flat and expressionless. All the electric +force, the fire and enthusiasm, had faded from it. + +Brent held out his hand. "Thank heaven it's over--all but the voting!" +he said fervently. "It's the reaction, I suppose." + +"Yes," replied Harry, dully. "No doubt it's the reaction." + +He turned and went slowly to the elevator. + +In the automobile at the curb Craig touched Paddy the Brick on the +shoulder. "Well?" he asked. "Is he number 239?" + +Paddy the Brick looked at him with a white fury distorting his features. + +"I don't know whether he's 239 or not," he said, "but I'd swear to +anything that would 'fix' him! That's the lawyer that let them send me +up two years ago!" + + + + +CHAPTER XLV + +THE CHASM + +The elevator deposited Harry at the third floor, where was the suite of +rooms that he had occupied while in town during the campaign, as being +more accessible than his own apartment. The outer chamber of the suite +was set with all the paraphernalia of a committee-room, with a huge +writing-table and several small desks holding telegraph instruments +installed to receive the returns. To-morrow would find it humming with +excitement, but it was deserted now. He had given Suzuki, his valet, +the evening off. + +He shut the door and stood a moment leaning against it. His eyes were +blank, his face set. He had not known of Cameron Craig's journey +abroad, nor in the rush of the campaign had he seen the newspaper +paragraph which told of the success of the operation in Buda-Pesth. +But in the single look across the pavement he had leaped to the truth. +Craig had recovered his faculties--there had been full knowledge and +vengeful purpose in the haggard eyes. What he had dreaded, the +possibility which he had of late locked in an inner chamber of his +mind, had come to pass. All was finished! The Sword of Damocles was +about to fall! + +What remained? To creep away, like a dastard, he, the leader in the +fight? To fly, like the discovered thief, as he had once thought of +doing? Even that was impossible now. He knew his enemy too well to +suppose that he would have left that way open! The other was but +playing with him, like a cat with a mouse, till the moment came to +publicly denounce him. For with a kind of prescience he guessed +Craig's real purpose, to seize the climactic moment and abstract from +his humiliation the last ounce of sensationalism. + +All night, in the silent, empty apartment, under the brilliant lights, +Harry strode up and down--up and down tirelessly, his face white, his +hands clenched, confronting the blank wall that reared before him. +Temptation, in its most insidious form, fell upon him. Why should he +not brazen it out? After all, the burden of proof was upon his +accuser. He had destroyed the record-card which had held his physical +measurements. Jubilee Jim could be depended upon to swear to his +presence at the bungalow through the winter: wild horses would drag no +other story from his faithful lips. Simple and God-fearing as the old +negro was, love for his master was one of the prime articles of his +emotional and uncomplex religion. For that love he would +unquestioningly risk even the fires of the material hell of which his +Bible told him! Such an alibi would hold. What other proof could +Craig bring forward, further than a fortuitous resemblance, materially +weakened now by hair and beard, to a one-time convict in a penitentiary +in another state? + +Was he not doubly justified in this deception? He was really innocent. +If he foreswore himself a thousand times, it would be in the way both +of justice and expediency. It would solve the problem. The new Cause +needed him. Had he any right to fling himself away, merely in the +interest of fictitious truth, on the mawkish principle of "Thou shalt +not do evil that good may come"? + +Yet, to perjure himself! To know himself liar and hypocrite, even in +the hour when he should kiss the holy volume in the vows of a high +office? He who even in that past that had been clouded by egoistic +eccentricity and marred by dissipation, had always counted an oath +sacred! To bind that faithful servant on the mountain to a black +perjury--which would shadow his imagination with the smoke of the +eternal burning! + +There came to him suddenly the memory of words that had woven with the +fevered imaginings of his illness on the mountain--words of Jubilee +Jim's prayer: + +"Dey tek yo' darlin' son ... en put er crown o' tho'ns on he beautiful +haid, en he ain' done nuthin' 'cep'n good. Ah don' keer what Marse +Harry have on; Ah reck'n when he come lak dis, yo' gwine he'p me he'p +him--kase dat what he done fo' me!" + +The stumbling, broken accents seemed to strike across the void. What +if, instead of the great machine of recompense that he had +distinguished in that prison experience, there were indeed a personal +God, as Jubilee Jim believed, throned in his vast white heaven of +glory--a God pitiful for the agony of his human creatures. Would he +look down now and hear his cry for help? Harry flung himself suddenly +on his knees, and leaned his forehead against the dark wainscoting. He +knew that he uttered no word, but all his being seemed to resolve +itself into an inarticulate cry for aidance. It was the first appeal +of his life to something outside of himself, the first cry of human +weakness, groping in its utter hopelessness for the Infinite. It was +the last step of the long way Harry had travelled--from self-abasement +to remorse and awakening conscience, through struggle with appetite to +victory over himself, self-abnegation, acquiescence in the great law of +retribution, and finally, in his despair, to prayer. + +And out of the deep to which he had called, calmness at length came to +him, and with it a clear and steady purpose. As dawn took down the red +draw-bars of the sky to let in the day, he threw open a shutter and +stood looking down with aching eyes upon the drowsily-waking street. +There should be no lying denial, no cowardly evasion--nothing less than +the naked truth. If fate, if God, demanded this last thing of him--if +only so could he balance the account--he would not repine. He had +fought the fight, and at the last, so far as he could, he would keep +the faith! + + +Before the hotel had awakened, Harry was in his own apartment. He had +left a note for Brent, who was to be in charge at the hotel suite, +saying briefly that he should not appear that day, but would be with +the Committee at eight o'clock. He had sent the same message also to +Judge Allen. He told Suzuki to admit no one, disconnected his +telephone, and thereafter remained at his desk writing, a plate of +sandwiches at his elbow, bending himself to the final arrangement of +the details of his personal affairs, as he might have done, he thought +once, if by some clairvoyancy he foresaw that to-morrow he would die. +Death, indeed, would have been a welcome solution if by it he could +have bought extrication. Was he not going, living, to a worse death +than he should ever die? + +As the mantel-clock struck seven, he laid the last written paper in the +desk-drawer and rising, went into his dressing-room. He bathed and +dressed, the last time in his life, he told himself, that he should don +the evening habilaments of a gentleman--grave-clothes! For the blow +would not be delayed. To-morrow, no doubt, the state would ring with +his downfall. To-night--in the hour of his victory, if victory should +be his--he would write _finis_ to the final chapter and surrender +himself to the law. + +It was just at the half-hour when Harry opened the outer door of his +apartment. But he did not pass through. Three men had been waiting +silently just across the threshold. One of them was Craig. They +entered without a word, Craig shut the door and one of the others took +his stand before it. + + + + +CHAPTER XLVI + +CRAIG STRIKES + +Sevier had stepped back as they entered. He had not been startled at +the ambush; he had gone past surprises. He was conscious only of a +cold preparedness and a kind of dull wonder as to the form of their +errand. The purpose in Craig's face left no cause for any speculation +as to their intent. He looked at the other's two companions, perfect +types of the "heeler," burly and with brutally-cunning features, that +wore now a gloze of satisfaction in the work that was forward. They +were not in uniform--it was not an arrest, then. What did Craig intend +to do? He turned, set his hat on the hall table and passed into the +sitting-room. Craig followed him. Harry now saw that he carried a +compact bundle under his arm. He snapped the cord and disclosed a +costume--jacket and trousers of black and yellow-grey stripes and a +flat, peaked cap of dingy canvas. Around one arm of the jacket was a +leathern band which bore a metal number--239! + +"Put them on," commanded Craig shortly. "Over what you are wearing. +They'll be large enough." + +A painful mist was before Harry's eyes. He understood. Craig meant to +give him up stamped with the old felon character, clothed in the +unmistakable livery of the convict! Well, if not to-night, to-morrow. +What did it matter? + +As he drew on the loathsome garments, buttoning the jacket close up to +his chin, their very touch seemed to cling insupportably to his flesh. +The smell of the coarse fulled cloth in his nostrils gave him a qualm +as of actual physical sickness, and the feel of the canvas cap across +his forehead burned it like a brand. + +Craig had taken from his pocket a black cloth mask. "Now this," he +said. "I believe you wore one in your last burglary," he added with +cold malevolence. "I am disposed to miss no realistic touch, believe +me." + +Harry put on the mask, whose lower hem fell below his beard. Through +its eye-holes he looked evenly at the sneering, implacable face +opposite. A peculiar apathy had come to him. The wide +humiliation--even the cheap and ghastly sensationalism of the mask did +not touch him. Like the hapless voyageur caught in the rapids above +the great falls, he was watching the nearing brink with a kind of +fascination and with the roar of the cataract in his ears. + +One of the men had opened a window to peer down into the street. "All +clear," he announced briefly, and Craig went to the hall and opened the +door. + +A monster limousine with curtains drawn waited at the curb, and on the +front seat sat a figure at whose pallid face and red-rimmed eyes Harry +gazed without a start but with a strange sensation of fitness. Here +indeed was the real thief who had shot Craig, but leagued now with his +enemy to his undoing! + +Sitting in the dark interior, as the car sped along with its silent +company, Harry remembered another ride of two years before, when he had +flung through the night flying from his own conscience, incarnate in +the figure that now rode beside the chauffeur. Was he never to lay +that old ghost? He noted dully that the streets were jostling with +eager throngs which made compact eddies here and there before some +newspaper bulletin-board or flaring club-window which displayed the +reports of the voting, as, township by township, county by county, the +tally came in. On one the legend was being posted, "_Sevier Leads_," +and a muffled cheer was wafted after. He shut his eyes. Almost he +could have thought himself in the grip of some _outré_, high-coloured +dream--but he knew that it was no dream. + +The limousine slowed and stopped. Harry turned his head as the door +opened; they were at the gate of Midfields. + +As they neared the upper end of the drive, a man rose from the steps +and came toward them. It was Lawrence Treadwell. He started as if he +had been stung at sight of the masked and striped figure between its +stolid escort. He turned on Craig, his eyes blazing with amazement and +anger. + +"My God!" he cried. "You haven't dared--but this is infamous. It's an +outrage! You--" + +"Keep your place!" ground Craig. "I tell you I know what I'm doing!" + +"It's my private opinion you're as crazy as a March hare," retorted the +other, "but if you _are_ right, I'll have nothing to do with it, do you +understand? Nothing! I don't care _what_ your damned evidence is!" + +Craig turned his back on him and led the way up the steps, and after an +instant's hesitation Treadwell followed. Through an open window Harry +glimpsed the interior of the east room, dismantled now for the +evening's strenuous occupation, where several masculine figures were +grouped about a table, excitedly working over charts, and he could hear +the irritant buzz of the telephone as it signalled the bulletins that +were beginning now to pour into the busy hotel suite at the other end +of the wire. Craig did not ring at the big door but led the way along +the porch to a French-window, of the library, which stood ajar. He +peered into it, then with an exclamation of satisfaction motioned the +two attendants back, said a low word to Paddy the Brick at his heels, +and flung the window open. + +Sevier entered, Craig and his stool-pigeon next. Treadwell followed +and drew the window to behind him. + + + + +CHAPTER XLVII + +WITH HIS BACK TO THE WALL + +In the wide, lamp-lighted room into which this weird quartette had so +startlingly entered, before the capacious fireplace two men had been +sitting smoking--Judge Allen and his friend Governor Eveland. At the +sudden apparition both had turned sharply toward the window--two +strangely dissimilar figures: the Judge slight and spare and scholarly, +his pale, finely-chiselled features tinged in the glow; the other +deep-chested and powerful, of herculean mould, with a rugged face made +almost patriarchal by the long grey beard which swept his chest: both +countenances for the instant curiously alike in their expression of +shocked surprise. + +The Judge arose abruptly from his chair, his gaze shifting from the +masked figure in striped clothes to Craig's face, eagerly alight and +triumphant. He had no welcome for this summary entrance. + +"Who is responsible for this intrusion?" he asked coldly. + +Craig laughed. "I am responsible," he said. "I have business with you +both. For some time, as you are aware, I have been debarred from such +pursuits. However, I am now myself again, and free to pick up lost +threads. Hence my call to-night." + +"It can wait a more opportune time." The Judge spoke with asperity. +"Moreover, I must ask you to remember that I have servants to announce +my guests." + +"Apologies may be in order later," Craig returned, "if my errand does +not justify itself. My business with you is to inform you that you and +your friends have been giving countenance to a man whom the law is +tracking down--a convict who escaped from prison in the next state some +months ago. You see him before you." He looked at the Governor, who +had neither moved nor spoken--he had small liking for Cameron Craig. +"My business with you, Governor Eveland, is to demand that you call +upon the local authorities to arrest this jailbird, pending his +extradition to your own jurisdiction. I have brought with me, under my +personal surety, an inmate of the penitentiary"--he pointed to Paddy +the Brick--"who was this criminal's cellmate and who has identified +him." + +There was a slight pause before the Governor replied. He had shared +his host's irritation at the unceremonious entrance and this was +allayed by no regard for Craig, whom he had always reckoned an evil +influence in the activities of the state of which he himself was Chief +Executive. Now the pallid face with its bandage across one temple, the +distempered eyes and strange excitement, smote him with distaste. + +"I like neither your method nor your manner, Mr. Craig. This would +seem to be a matter for the police, not for me, nor, I take it, for +Judge Allen. Why you choose to drag this man here, at such a moment, +with this skulduddery of mask and stripes, I cannot imagine." + +Craig laughed again, sneeringly. "A little fancy of my own, and regard +for the dramatic proprieties..." + +Treadwell strode forward with an exclamation. + +"Judge--Governor Eveland!" he said explosively. "Let me say something. +I came here to-night purely in my capacity of Cameron Craig's attorney, +intent only on saving him from what seemed to me a piece of brazen +lunacy. But I begin to see that there is something behind this, and if +it isn't lunacy it is something I like still less. I withdraw here and +now from any connection with him or this action--" + +"Withdraw and be damned!" Craig flung him, savagely. "I know what I am +about!" His voice rose. "That man, Governor Eveland, is an escaped +prisoner from the penitentiary of your state! Tear off his mask and +see for yourselves who our 'John Doe' really is--this fine thief and +would-be murderer--the man who shot me down a year ago!" + +"Stop!" The Governor's voice rang through the room. He was on his +feet now, stern authority in every line of his posture. "Mr. Craig, +listen to me! You have thrust yourself here without warrant of right +or of invitation, in a matter which you--not I--have elected to make my +business. Very well: I take the affair and this prisoner into my own +hands. Do you understand?" + +He paused, his lips clipped to like shears. Craig's outburst, vicious +with suppressed fury, had given him a lightning-like glimpse into +something unguessed in the situation. The man before him, then, in +this convict dress, was the burglar convicted of that old shooting--the +prisoner whom he had seen at the court-house, and whose personality had +so attracted and puzzled him. Yet there was more beneath Craig's +attitude than an understandable desire to punish the man who had shot +him: more than that in those infuriate eyes, shaking hands and +malicious triumph. The Governor had a hatred of persecution. His mind +worked according to a law of stern and inflexible justice, yet to him +justice opened itself to no assault of man's passions. + +Under that holding look Craig sat down heavily, angry arrogance in his +face. Treadwell took a chair near him, and Paddy the Brick remained +standing in the background, his small eyes glancing furtively from one +to the other. + +The Governor resumed his seat and bent his deliberate gaze on the +figure that had been standing movelessly before him. A quick memory +had come to him of the other's face, now hidden, as he remembered to +have once seen it--clear-eyed, vivid and forceful, strangely lacking in +the ear-marks of the criminal, a face that had often recalled itself to +his mind since that day. He had no vulgar curiosity, but the patent +mystery in the background called to him strangely. + +"Are you, as this man alleges, a prisoner who some months ago broke +jail in the adjoining state?" + +"I am." The voice, muffled by the mask, was low but distinct. + +"The man who shot him in his library?" + +"No." + +The questioning, deep grey eyes looked steadily at the mask--it seemed +as if the gaze would bore through the cloth. "But you were found +guilty of that offence!" + +"I was convicted, yes." + +The Governor was silent a moment; then his hand reached for the pen on +the table. "On the admission, then," he said slowly, "it is my duty to +request the authorities to take you into custody. You are aware of +your rights under the law?" + +The striped figure bowed. "I am. I shall waive extradition. With +your permission, however, I should like to make a statement." + +"He can make that in the jail," interposed Craig contemptuously. "Take +off his mask and send for the police." + +The Governor frowned. "He can make it here and now, if he so chooses. +This is not your house, Mr. Craig. If you do not care to listen, there +will be no objection to your withdrawal--with your witness." + +There was a fleeting pause, in which a livid red mounted to Craig's +brow, dark against the bandage. Then the Governor turned. + +"Do you take your solemn oath that what you are about to say is the +truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?" + +"I do." + +The Governor leaned back in his chair. "You may make your statement," +he said quietly. + + +Harry bowed. He was feeling a chill sense of estrangement, as though +the bars that were so soon to shut him from the life of which he had +been a part had already fallen between him and his friends. But he was +oddly self-controlled. In the few moments he had been thinking +swiftly--not of himself, but of the cause he represented, the men who +had pinned their faith upon him and whom he had betrayed, whose leader, +Judge Allen, sat there now ignorant of the ruin that overwhelmed them. +To say to him, "I, Harry Sevier, whom you honoured, whom you made the +bearer of your party banner, reached forth for this trust knowing +myself a hunted man, outlawed of honest folk!" They were his friends, +his loyal comrades in the fight, men whose friendship had been tried +out by long years! In this last hour he shrank from a judgment biased +with sympathy, and a fierce craving was rising in him for a +justification based on no personal appeal. + +He took a step backward to the mantel and stood thus, a little removed +from them, looking from one to the other. He spoke in a low voice--not +the alert, vibrant voice of the old Harry Sevier, but one alien, +metallic, and strangely devoid of feeling. + +"What I have to say may soon be said. It was not of my own will that I +came here with covered face, and since this masquerade is not of my +choosing, it may serve its purpose a moment longer. You, Judge Allen, +know me well. Governor Eveland, you also are not unacquainted with me. +With every one in this room I have come in contact--not as a convict, +but as a citizen and an honest man. My association with you, Judge +Allen, has involved certain responsibilities, and these I have accepted +while I have lain under the law. For this I owe you a greater +reparation than I can ever make. I know that justification in the eyes +of the world is impossible, but in your own mind--in the minds of +others who stand with you--it perhaps may be given me. But a +justification is empty to me that springs from personal sympathy. I +want it as man to man. For this reason I keep on the mask a little +longer." + +He paused. The Governor had not spoken; he had settled back in his +great chair, one hand in his beard. The Judge was leaning intently +forward, his hands clasped; he had never taken his eyes from the +speaker, save once to glance at Craig, who sat with narrowed eyes and +heavy lips curved in a malicious sneer. Treadwell's elbow was on his +knee, his chin in his palm, his brows drawn into a frown that told +nothing, and behind all stood Paddy the Brick, furtively watching. + +When the striped figure spoke again, it was in a voice which held a +first thin thrill of feeling: + +"I have said that I lay under the law, but it was through that law's +error. I was unjustly accused and wrongfully convicted. I was +innocent." + +The Governor spoke, coldly and deliberately. "You were taken at +midnight in the Craig house." + +"I had entered it for no dishonest purpose. I broke no bolt nor +bar--that had been done before my arrival." + +"You allege, then, that you were not in company with the robbers?" + +"I was not. They were there when I entered." + +"Why did you not give the alarm?" + +"They made me their prisoner. A pistol was at my head." + +"You did not so testify at your trial." + +"I declined to testify at all." + +The Governor nodded. "That is true," he said. "I remember." + +There was a moment's pause, then the voice continued: + +"It is sometimes inevitable that the law, whose purpose it is to be +just, is terribly unjust. Sometimes the sole clue to a situation which +seems to spell inevitable guilt lies in a fact, small in itself, whose +significance is such that it cannot be brought forward. This was my +case. The fact which would have cleared me could not be told. I +became a convict. For six months I was an inmate of the Penitentiary. +Then--the way opened to freedom, and I took it. What man would not +have done so? I acknowledged no right of the law over my body. I went +back to my former life, and took up my old profession here in this +city." + +"Here!" The Judge muttered, under his breath. + +"And in that life I found opening responsibilities. New work called to +me. My help was needed. I could not shirk it. I knew the risk +always, but I counted it small. And the need was great! With such a +work waiting my hand, a labour that no one else, it seemed, could +do--one upon which much depended--was I to stand aside, to withhold my +effort on the slender chance that discovery might sometime overtake me?" + +The speaker seemed to have forgotten the Governor, to have swept all +else to one side and to be addressing now only the Judge, in an appeal +that touched the older man profoundly. It was, he thought, as though +the man's whole soul was crying out in some sense for forgiveness and +absolution for an injury unwittingly inflicted. + +"The one thing has happened now which must lay the past bare. I must +meet this--the scandal, the shame. My life, all that makes life worth +living, ends to-night, and I stand before you with the bare soul of a +truthful man. You have known me and trusted me. You--and others--have +put faith in me...." The voice, for the first time, faltered and fell. + +The Judge's head had been bowed, but he lifted it now. + +"God alone knows the secrets of our hearts," he said, heavily. "If you +were innocent--but of that how can I say? My view of your actions +since your escape--those which may affect me--must necessarily hang +upon that point. I could believe that you are not a burglar. It may +be that knowledge of your true identity will presently convince me of +this. And I might be persuaded that your presence in the Craig house +that night was no more than an unfortunate coincidence. But the +evidence of the shooting appeared at the time irrefutable. I cannot +conceive that the mere knowledge of what you are would be likely to +affect my belief in that respect. Your statement as to that is not +only wholly unsupported, but was--and is--bluntly contradicted by the +man who was shot." + +He ceased speaking. No word came from the striped figure, only a +slight movement of one hand, expressing at once resignation and +futility. Then the hand lifted to the mask. + +The Governor, however, stayed the action of revealment with a sudden +gesture. + +"One moment," he said quickly. "We have gone so far, I should like to +go a step further--and still forensically, if you please. The question +of identity may wait. Do I understand that you deny that you fired +that shot?" + +"I do." + +Craig lurched forward in his chair. "This is no trial court!" he +exclaimed savagely. "He has had his hearing once." + +"Be silent!" commanded the Governor. "This man is in my hands, not in +yours!" The warning was heavy and vengeful, and it held now all the +electric energy of the man that had made him famous through a long +career of criminal practice before his Governorship days, and that now, +unleashed, dominated the room. Before it Craig whitened with a surge +of anger that sent a keen probe of pain through his temple. He sat +back, breathing hard, his great fingers working on the arms of his +chair. + +The Governor was leaning forward now, his hand on the table. + +"If I recollect--and I think I do, as certain aspects of the case +interested me at the time--there was a witness to the shooting beside +the men who were assumed to be your comrades. There was a woman there." + +"She did not see my face." + +"But she might have seen the face of the shooter. Why did she not see +yours?" + +"I wore a mask." + +"Is not a mask, in itself, a badge of criminal intent?" + +"It was not mine. One of the men dropped it when they ran." + +"If, being innocent," the Governor went on, "you put on the mask, the +only presumption is that you did not wish the woman to recognise you. +Therefore, she knew. Did you speak to her?" + +There was no reply. + +"If you spoke to her, it was when the man who had fired the shot was in +flight. Your words to her, verified by herself--if she were +reputable--would be evidence that you did not do the shooting. Why +then, did you not call her as a witness?" + +The long French-window had swung again ajar and the cooling evening +breeze rustled the paper that lay upon the table. From the far road +there came a muffled, long-drawn cheer, that trailed across the tense +silence of the room. + +"If the significant fact which could be brought forward at your trial +was the identity of this missing witness; if her testimony would show +that the law had erred--if it might operate to establish your +innocence--would not she herself justify you in revealing it?" + +The silence, a longer one this time, remained unbroken. + +"Do you still refuse to tell the name of the woman?" + +"I do." + +The Governor leaned to the table and picked up the pen. But in the +instant there was a quick step behind them. + +All turned. Echo stood framed in the window--a figure in filmy white, +against which a single rose glowed like a hot ruby. + +"I was that woman, Governor Eveland," she said clearly. + + + + +CHAPTER XLVIII + +THE HEART OF A WOMAN + +For an instant there was a blank silence. The Judge sat as if stunned, +one hand across his lips, the other clenched on his knee. Harry's +breath had caught in his throat; he stood taken aback and confounded, +his thought shocked apart and dispersed as a street explosion +dissipates a crowd of pedestrians. He forgot all else, was conscious +only of the deep fire of her eyes and the white surge of her breast, +only that he loved her and that she stood on the brink of ruin--she +whose name was unspotted from the world! An irrepressible exclamation +burst from his lips. + +The Governor put up his hand. "We will have the truth!" he said +sternly. + +He sat erect in his chair, his bushy brows drawn together, his +compelling eyes holding Echo's. Slowly he turned his grey head toward +Craig. + +"It was Miss Allen," said Craig. His smouldering gaze had fastened on +her with a savage joy. The drama was rushing now to its inevitable +_dénouement_. + +The crisis had come to Echo with fateful suddenness. From the +porch--whither she had stolen, full of excitement, to listen to the +bulletins from the east room that spelled victory for the cause of +Harry Sevier--she had glimpsed through the French window that gathering +in the library--the striped masked figure standing as before his +judges, Craig with his bandaged temple, the silent listeners. The mask +and the convict garb recalled that terrible midnight at Craig's house +and the later episode at the jail, blent in a shuddering composite, +even as the significance of the scene came home to her with a sudden +horrifying clarity. It was true then; Craig had returned recovered! +The escaped convict had been retaken, and he had come forward to repeat +his mistaken testimony! In her confusion of mind she did not reason: +it did not occur to her that here was no tribunal of justice. The +suggestion was overpowering: she only knew that within that room men +sat again in judgment upon him with whose fate her own peace of mind +was so entangled. And she knew the truth! In the swift surprise the +shame and horror of the publicity which had wrestled with her pain of +conscience during the weeks succeeding her visit to the jail and the +baleful certitude it had brought, rolled over her anew with the +anguished dread of Harry Sevier's contempt. But there was no wavering: +the fight had been fought out once for all, and she had waited for +Craig's revelation with outer calmness, though with her blood stilling +to an icy current in her veins. Two things had come to her at the same +instant: Craig did not intend to involve her, and the convict knew who +she was. As she leaned against the sill listening, the meaning of that +obstinate refusal to answer had thrilled her. He, like Craig, had +known her, then, all along. Yet he had not betrayed her, nor would he +betray her even now! The thought had spurred her resolve and sent her +forward into the room with that confession on her lips. + +She came forward slowly, with what seemed a pathetic weariness. Her +face was without colour and there were bruised shadows beneath her +eyes, but above them her amber hair was like sunbeams in a mesh of gold. + +"Governor Eveland," she said, "you have known me all my life. I do not +think you have ever had cause to doubt my word." + +"There is no need to remind me of that, my child," he answered, +gravely. "Neither I nor any one who knows you, would believe you spoke +anything but the truth." + +A wan smile, in which was yet a glint of pride, crossed her face. +"Then," she said, "I have faith that you will believe me now. I went +to that house to gain a thing dearer than my own happiness. No one at +home knew it. I did so secretly--my parents believed that I had gone +to visit my aunt." + +She paused an instant, and turned upon Craig a look of mingled scorn +and aversion. "This man had once done me the honour to ask me to marry +him, and I had done myself the honour to refuse. He had in his +hands--how it had come to him I have never known--a letter which he +threatened to publish. It was a personal letter that had no bearing on +the present--one written before I was born--but it had the power to +bring pain and humiliation upon some one I loved." + +The Judge lifted his head; his eyes were moist and shining. "That is +true," he said, in a smothered voice. "I knew of the letter, and--of +the threat." + +She did not proceed at once; her gaze was still upon Craig, and she +waited. + +"It is true enough," he said, and burst into jarring laughter. "Yes, +gentlemen. It is the fact. I had that letter and I would have made my +price on it!" He looked from one to the other challengingly, the +arrogance and unscrupulousness of the man leaping in his eyes. But no +one spoke. Only Treadwell, his eyes averted, moved his chair a little +further from him. + +"Yes," she repeated, deliberately. "You made your price. I went there +that night, to your house, to beg you for that letter. I waited for +you till you came, and when you would not give it to me otherwise, I +agreed to marry you." + +She faced the Governor again. "I was to marry him within the hour. +Then--then came the shot from the alcove. I was mad with fright and +with fear. There had been three men behind the curtains. Two ran--the +man who had done the shooting and another. The third--" + +She broke off and turned to the motionless figure in the striped +clothes. "I know now that you were the third!" she said. "I thank +you--with all my heart I thank you, for what you did!" + +There was no answer from behind the mask, and she again addressed the +Governor: + +"This man must have heard my pleading and pitied me. He thought of me +before he thought of his own escape. He took the letter I had come for +from the safe and gave it to me, then dragged me to the door and told +me to run. So I--I got away." + +The room was so still that one heard now, through the closed doors, the +muffled click of the telegraph keys in the east-room, and the voices of +the clerks calling the tally of figures. Wistfulness and pain had +crept into her voice now. + +"Next day the newspapers said that the man who had fired the shot had +been arrested. I believed this to be true, for though I went one day +to the trial, I was in the court-room only a few moments and I could +not see the face of the man who was being tried." + +The striped figure made a sudden involuntary movement. She had not +seen him, then? Could it be that he had been mistaken, that she had +not known? Harry's heart began to beat violently. + +"I believed it till months afterward, when I came back from Europe. +Then I saw a ring which this man had given to his lawyer. It was like +the one the man who had given me the letters had worn that night, and +this made me afraid that a mistake had been made. I visited the +Penitentiary to find out. It was the day of the attack on the +warden--when this man was stabbed in his defence." + +Again she paused and her eyes shifted to the masked figure. "You must +have known me," she said gently. "You must have known my name. Yet +you never told. Do you think, whatever it might mean to me--after what +you did--that I could keep silent, if the truth may help you now?" + +Sevier had no answer. Through and through the maze of his conflicting +feeling was stabbing an assurance sharpened with unbelievable joy. He +had been thinking her cowardly and calloused with worldly selfishness; +here she was risking all--and not for him, Harry Sevier, whom she +loved, but for an unknown convict! + +The Governor was looking at her with intentness. "You mean that he is +_not_ the one who did the shooting?" + +"He is not." + +Craig sneered. "She says what she has been told to say," he said with +dry lips. "You will understand why, presently." + +"Perhaps," returned the Governor, coldly, "I shall." Then, turning to +Echo-- + +"How do you know this is not the man?" + +"This man is tall; the man who did the shooting was short." + +"But--his face. You saw it that night distinctly? Would you know it +if you saw it again?" + +"As well as I know yours." + +He said no more, and after an instant's pause, she went on: + +"Mr. Mason, his lawyer, had told me he believed that if the shooting +could have been disproved, his client might have been cleared, and +knowing what I did, it seemed to me that I must tell the whole. +It--was not easy, for while that night I had thought only of keeping +the secret of the letter, I came to see later what the world would say +of my presence there. And a woman's name is all she has. So ... I +made up my mind. But that same day I read that the man had escaped +from prison. There seemed no longer any need then of my telling. +There had been no need till now." + +She stopped, and stood looking steadily at the Governor, her hands +twisted together, her face white. She was far less vividly conscious +of him, however, and of all the others--Craig, her father, +Treadwell--than of one whom she thought far away, but who now, sometime +or other, must know! + +The Governor spoke, quietly and evenly: + +"Let us go back to a matter of detail. I should like to picture the +scene that night a little more distinctly. Where were you standing +when the shot was fired?" + +She changed her position slightly. "Here, nearly in the centre of the +room." + +"And the man who shot from the alcove?" + +"There." She pointed one side, to the bay-window, before which now +stood Paddy the Brick. + +The latter would have drawn away, but the Governor stayed him with a +gesture. "No, stand where you are, if you please," he said. And Paddy +the Brick stood still, shifting his feet and ill-at-ease, his narrow +eyes turning stealthily toward Craig. + +To Echo the illusion was considerable, for the room was not unlike that +other library in which had occurred the scene she was so painfully +redrawing. There was the same effect of rich bookcases, of desk and +picture-hung walls, and in lieu of the alcove was the big double window +with its heavy drawn curtains. The Governor stretched his hand and +tilted the shade of the lamp, so that its light fell full upon the +latter, lighting the cringing face of the stool-pigeon before it. + +"What was the man who shot like?" he asked. + +"He was middle-sized and thick-set, with light hair that sprang in a +cowlick from his forehead. He..." + +She had stopped abruptly. She was staring with wide, horrified eyes at +the man who stood blinking in the radiance--at the up-thrust, +sand-coloured hair, the rounded shoulders, the red-rimmed eyes, which +now held a trapped look of animal fear. + +She stiffened. She pointed at him. + +"_You!_" she cried. "_You are the man who fired that shot!_" + + + + +CHAPTER XLIX + +THE GOVERNOR TAKES A HAND + +On the startled silence, already so tense with conflicting forces, the +accusation fell with the suddenness of an electric shock. + +Its effect on Paddy the Brick was instantaneous. He drew back, his +hand clutching at the curtains. He was looking not at Echo, but past +her, at the Governor, who had risen towering in his place, and if ever +guilt and the dread that is confession showed upon a face, it was +written upon his, in lines unmistakable that he who ran might read. + +Craig started from his seat. "You fool!" he snarled at him. + +But Paddy the Brick gave him no glance. The fear of the hunted was +upon him; he saw himself taken in a snare, the witnesses to his +unpunished act confronting him, and clutching at him the hand of the +Law. He turned, and with one desperate jerk, tore the hangings aside, +and with arms before his face, plunged bodily through the shattering +glass of the bay-window to the garden. + +So abrupt and fateful had been the crash of his headlong flight, that +for a breath it seemed as if all there had been turned to stone. Craig +first found voice. + +"Enough of this farce!" he cried. "Governor Eveland, this man is an +escaped convict, and I call upon you to do your duty!" + +The Governor turned swiftly on him, his cavernous eyes flashing fire. +His long forefinger shot out like a javelin. + +"You coward and blackmailer!" he blazed. "The man you brought here as +your witness was the one who shot you! His very flight is confession. +And I believe _you knew he was the guilty one_!" His deep voice rang +like a bell, quick with indignation and contempt. "You hate this man +before you, and when he came between you and your plan, you tried to +lie the noose about his neck!" + +Craig's face was convulsed, his hands moving in distorted gestures. A +writhing spot of pain was bubbling like a white-hot coal beneath the +bandage on his temple. He burst into a wild laugh. + +"Damn your beliefs!" he shouted. "You know who I am! The whole state +knows me! What I swore to I'll swear to again. You can't make black +into white by your opinions. This man is a convict--a _convict_! Do +you hear? He is under sentence..." + +The Governor had seated himself at the table and was writing swiftly. +He looked up now. + +"And I," he thundered, "am Governor. As such, I don't care who he is. +I don't want to know. It is enough that I am convinced of his +innocence, as I am of your perjury. Here is his pardon. From this +moment he is free!" + +He rose, and if honest indignation could have blasted, his look would +have blasted the man who stood livid and gasping before him: + +"Let me tell you one thing more, Cameron Craig! If you dare to drag +his name or that of this woman into publicity now, to satisfy your mean +revenge, I'll see that you are indicted, so help me God! We shall find +whose testimony will be believed!" + +Craig, swaying now on suddenly numb and uncertain feet, would have +shouted too, but his tongue seemed tied and a heavy torpor was +clutching all his limbs. He heard his own voice come forth ragged and +broken: + +"I--I dare! You--this--!" + +Tottering, he lurched to a chair and fell into it, even as the +Governor's look took on a glare of outraged astonishment--for Craig's +face now was drawn and contorted into a malignant grimace. But all at +once this faded out, the features became expressionless, the eyes dull, +and he slipped in a huddle from the chair to the floor. + +He lay there upon his face without a word or movement. He did not hear +the Governor's exclamation nor the voices about him, nor feel the touch +of inquiring hands at heart and wrist. His passion had undone him. +The dulling pulse beat on, but the brain had once more ceased its +functioning; nor would it ever again quicken that inert body, at the +behest of the great surgeon in Buda-Pesth or of any other. + + +Outside in the hall there were confusion and wondering voices, as the +Governor, bending his great frame to the burden, with the aid of the +Judge and other willing hands, bore the helpless, sagging form to the +car that waited at the foot of the drive with its attendants. Before +he followed the rest, Treadwell had turned and held out his hand to the +man in the convict dress, and there was in the gesture, no less than +the warm clasp, assurance man to man of steadfast silence and a +friendship that was to be without end. + +In the silent room--in a quiet that seemed curiously heavy after the +storm of ebullient passion and pain that had swept it--Echo, sitting +stirless but with every vein throbbing painfully, saw the striped +figure pass behind the big leathern screen, to emerge a moment later, +still wearing the mask but clad now in the conventional black-and-white +of masculine evening-dress. In his hand he carried a striped bundle. +He laid this on the red coals of the grate and the flames leaped up to +wind it in a mass of brightness, shaming, for one triumphant minute, +the dim light of the shaded lamp. As he stood with his back to her, +looking down upon the smouldering tinder, some trick in the posture +brought her a quick thrill of wretchedness. In the radiance she buried +her face in her hands. + +"Echo!" + +She started and looked up with a sudden wildness, for the cry seemed +weirdly to have materialised from the very substance of her longing. +The figure had turned from the fireplace--was standing before her--with +uncovered face! + + + + +CHAPTER L + +REVELATION + +"_You!_" she said. "_You--you!_" + +"Yes." + +With her eyes upon him she moved away with uncertain, backward steps. +When she spoke again it was with a quick breath that was like a sob, +and in a voice scarcely audible, with breaks between the words: "It +is--it was?--_you_--" + +"It was I." + +"You!" + +"Yes." + +"All--the time?" + +"All the time." + +There was a silence. She had begun to tremble from head to foot. Her +face was turned away and her hands were shaking; she clenched them +tight. Her voice fell lower, till it was the merest whisper: + +"You were the--the convict--the man--in Craig's library?" + +He came nearer. "Yes," he said. + +She put one hand to her throat. "I--don't care to understand--now. +I--I'm only trying--to realise--" She paused. The doming tinder in +the fire-place broke and fell, and for a last instant a yellow-ochre +burst of flame threw a bright golden veil about them. Two great tears +rolled down her cheeks. "Then you," she whispered, "then you know why +I went there. You could not believe that I--that I--" + +"My darling!" His arms were around her now, crushing her to him with +tender fierceness, till she could feel his heart thudding against her +breast, and the blossom crushed there held for him the scent of all the +roses of all the world. He bent his head and their lips clung into a +kiss. "Never--never--that!" he murmured, with his lips against her +cheek, "though I must be forgiven very much. I was blind. I thought +you knew--knew that it was really I there in the prison, knew and were +willing that it should be! And all the while..." + +"And I," she whispered, "I thought you had gone away, and didn't +care--any more. And all along--all along..." + +When they drew a little apart so that each might better see the other's +face, the wonder and miracle had touched them both with a kind of awe. +She looked at him with lips that were still trembling under the +startled glory in her eyes. "The day after that--that night--I went to +your office, saw my broken picture--and--the bottle. I guessed--I +guessed--" + +"It was true," he said. "I threw away my promise to you. I would have +thrown myself away with it! But it was not to be, sweetheart! I have +come back to you, dearest--dearest of all the world!" + +So they stood, haloed in the lamp-light, clinging together, swayed and +shaken, love and youth and dream melted into one golden eternity, +pouring forth tender, sweet confessions in broken words and silences, +oblivious to the passage of time, to the clamour that had begun to rise +from the rooms across the hall--to a sound that came over the tree-tops +of the avenue, blazing now with fireworks, the sound of jubilance and +marching feet, drawing nearer and nearer. + + +At midnight the great porch of Midfields was hung gay with lanterns and +bunting and Harry stood watching the rear-guard of torch-bearers stream +down the drive. The battalions had gathered like magic when the +blowing of whistles announced that the returns from the crucial +counties spelled victory beyond peradventure. They had swung down the +main street, a band at their head, a shouting, jostling army, to +acclaim the Governor-Elect. + +With his friends of the long fight--Judge Allen, Brent and a score of +others--about him, he had spoken to them, a short speech full of +feeling. They, not he, had won the fight, he told them. And the +victory was an earnest of the future. But the race was not always to +the swift nor the battle to the strong; the forces they had that day +vanquished would return to the struggle, and they must be beaten again +and again till the State, and every home within its borders, was free +forever. Now the cheering was over and the throngs had trooped away +after the band, to parade the denser streets of the business section, +while the Committee lingered for an exultant aftermath in the +dismantled east room. + +As Governor Eveland stood with the Judge on the porch, looking out over +the trampled lawn, Treadwell came up the drive. + +"I thought," he said, "that you would like to know about Craig. He is +as he was before they took him abroad for the operation. It is +unlikely that there will ever be any change again, they think." + +They heard him in silence, but across the mind of the older man was +flashing a stern epitaph--"He hath digged a pit for his neighbour, and +hath fallen into the midst of it himself." Presently he sighed--his +thought had shifted to the unknown man he had pardoned that night. + +"It has been a singular evening," he said. "I am sorry Sevier was not +here earlier--when our convict came. Strange that even you, Treadwell, +should not have seen his face! I wonder," he added musingly, "if we +shall ever know who he was!" + +The Judge shook his head--the same wonder was in his mind. Treadwell's +face was inscrutable. The Governor's gaze strayed up the long porch +where at the further end a girl stood with the Governor-Elect in the +rosy glow of the lanterns. He laid his gaunt hand affectionately on +the Judge's shoulder. + +"Brave and true!" he said. "When I think of what she told us tonight, +Beverly, I have no words!" + +Treadwell broke the silence. He spoke with a little flush mounting in +his face, "I hope I need not say that I--that what we have heard +to-night--" + +But the Judge stopped him. "My dear Treadwell!" he said, in gentle +reproof. "My dear Treadwell! We are all gentlemen!" + + +The Governor-Elect and the girl who stood beside him lingered a little +longer in the shadow of the crimson rambler. Down the avenue beyond +the great gate, the flambeaux clustered and faded and diminished, the +band music had throbbed to silence and about them was only the silver, +dew-silent night. They stood in silence. The old house behind them +was full of jovial voices and laughter, and every window was glowing +with lights, but where they stood was quiet and peace. + +At length he took both her hands and laid them together, beneath his +own, upon his breast. + + "'Hours fly, flowers die'" (he quoted), + "'New men, new ways, + Pass by; + Love stays.'" + + +He lifted the hands he held to his lips. "Do you know the one thing +that has come to me out of it all?" + +"Yes," she murmured, "I know." + +"It came to me in the night, last night. Up to then it had seemed +fate's whipper-in that was driving me. But then, when I saw the gulf +opening at my feet, and saw no way out, and ceased to struggle, I knew +all at once that fate is only an empty name; that it was--God." + +He felt her fingers quiver in his clasp. + +"There was an Eye that watched and a Hand that overruled," he said +slowly. "Even the evil and the hatred--the temptation, the sin and the +pain--the penalty--It overruled them all. Drink made the man who shot +Craig a criminal--yet but for that burglary you might now be Craig's +wife! Drink sent me to Craig's house that night--yet but for that +journey I could not have saved you. Drink closed the prison door on +me, but only there--I know it now!--could I have mastered it! And if I +have won in this campaign and if I sit--with you, my darling!--in the +Mansion on the Hill, it is because of what I learned within those +walls--the knowledge of what drink has done to men!" + +He released her hands and looked up into the heavens. + +"It shall vanish from this state," he said. "And it shall vanish from +this Union! I am as sure of it as if the sign of its passing were +written there in the sky!" + +She caught his arm. "See!" she said. + +Far away, city-ward, over the trees, against the deep, dark vault, the +dazzling, many-pointed blaze of a rocket paled and sank into the +darkness. + + + + +BOOKS BY + +HALLIE ERMINIE RIVES + +(Mrs. Post Wheeler) + + + The Long Lane's Turning + The Valiants of Virginia + The Kingdom of Slender Swords + Satan Sanderson + The Castaway + Hearts Courageous + A Furnace of Earth + + Tales From Dickens + + + + + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Long Lane's Turning, by Hallie Erminie Rives + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LONG LANE'S TURNING *** + +***** This file should be named 35326-8.txt or 35326-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/5/3/2/35326/ + +Produced by Al Haines + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Long Lane's Turning + +Author: Hallie Erminie Rives + +Illustrator: Frances Rogers + +Release Date: August 21, 2011 [EBook #35326] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LONG LANE'S TURNING *** + + + + +Produced by Al Haines + + + + + +</pre> + + +<BR><BR> + +<A NAME="img-front"></A> +<CENTER> +<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-front.jpg" ALT="Her lips trembled, but she spoke in a clear undertone, audible only to him, which faltered the merest trifle (Page 316.)" BORDER="2"> +<H4 CLASS="h4center"> +Her lips trembled, but she spoke in a clear undertone, <BR> +audible only to him, which faltered the merest trifle (<A HREF="#P316">Page 316</A>.) +</H4> +</CENTER> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<P CLASS="t1"> +THE LONG LANE'S TURNING +</P> + +<BR> + +<P CLASS="t3"> +BY +</P> + +<P CLASS="t2"> +HALLIE ERMINIE RIVES +</P> + +<P CLASS="t4"> +(Mrs. Post Wheeler) +</P> + +<BR> + +<P CLASS="t4"> +Author of "Satan Sanderson" "Hearts Courageous," <BR> +"The Valiants of Virginia," etc. +</P> + +<BR><BR> + +<P CLASS="t4"> +WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY +<BR> +FRANCES ROGERS +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<P CLASS="t3"> +NEW YORK +<BR> +DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY +<BR> +1917 +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<P CLASS="t4"> +Copyright, 1916, 1917 +<BR> +By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, Inc. +<BR> +as "The Heart of a Man" +</P> + +<BR> + +<P CLASS="t4"> +Copyright, 1917 +<BR> +By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, Inc. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<P CLASS="t2"> +CONTENTS +</P> + +<TABLE ALIGN="center" WIDTH="80%"> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">CHAPTER</TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> </TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">I </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap01">THE COUNSEL FOR THE DEFENCE</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">II </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap02">A MAN AND A WOMAN</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">III </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap03">THE AWAKENING</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">IV </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap04">THE PRODIGAL</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">V </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap05">THE UNLAID GHOST</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">VI </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap06">THE JUDGE SITS IN THE LAMPLIGHT</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">VII </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap07">ARROWS OF DESIRE</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">VIII </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap08">THE THRUST</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">IX </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap09">THE TURN OF THE LONG LANE</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">X </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap10">AFTER A YEAR</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XI </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap11">CRAIG FINDS HIS WEAPON</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XII </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap12">A HOSTAGE TO THE BOTTLE</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XIII </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap13">THE HEART OF A MAN</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XIV </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap14">THE HANDWRITING ON THE WALL</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XV </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap15">THE ONLY WAY</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XVI </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap16">DERELICT</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XVII </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap17">LIKE A THIEF IN THE NIGHT</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XVIII </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap18">THE PRICE</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XIX </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap19">PADDY THE BRICK INTERVENES</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XX </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap20">WHAT MATTERED MOST</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXI </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap21">CRAIG'S WAY</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXII </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap22">HARRY DECIDES</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXIII </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap23">THE BROKEN PICTURE</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXIV </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap24">THE WOMAN WHO KNEW</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXV </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap25">ON TRIAL</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXVI </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap26">THE HAUNTER OF THE SHADOW</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXVII </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap27">THE END OF THE JOURNEY</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXVIII </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap28">THE MAN IN THE WHEELED CHAIR</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXIX </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap29">THE LONE BATTLE</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXX </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap30">THE GIPSY RING</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXXI </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap31">AMBUSH</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXXII </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap32">THE COMING OF JOHN STARK</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXXIII </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap33">THE UNDERSTUDY</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXXIV </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap34">THE CRUCIBLE</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXXV </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap35">SANCTUARY</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXXVI </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap36">JUBILEE JIM'S JOURNEY</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXXVII </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap37">THE CALL</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXXVIII </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap38">THE CHALLENGE</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXXIX </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap39">THE JAILBIRD</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XL </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap40">GENTLEMEN ALL</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XLI </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap41">DARK DAYS</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XLII </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap42">THE MENDED ROAD</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XLIII </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap43">THE PITFALL</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XLIV </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap44">THE LIGHTED FUSE</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XLV </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap45">THE CHASM</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XLVI </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap46">CRAIG STRIKES</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XLVII </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap47">WITH HIS BACK TO THE WALL</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XLVIII </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap48">THE HEART OF A WOMAN</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XLIX </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap49">THE GOVERNOR TAKES A HAND</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">L </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap50">REVELATION</A></TD> +</TR> + +</TABLE> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<P CLASS="t2"> +ILLUSTRATIONS +</P> + +<H4 STYLE="margin-left: 15%; text-indent: -5%"> +<A HREF="#img-front"> +Her lips trembled, but she spoke in a clear<BR> + undertone, audible only to him, which faltered<BR> + the merest trifle. (Page 316) . . . <I>Frontispiece</I> +</A> +</H4> + +<H4 STYLE="margin-left: 15%; text-indent: -5%"> +<A HREF="#img-062"> +"I have answered you," she replied, "once and for all.<BR> + You will please consider it final" +</A> +</H4> + +<H4 STYLE="margin-left: 15%; text-indent: -5%"> +<A HREF="#img-130"> +He turned his head and saw the figure in the doorway.<BR> + "Echo!" he cried and rose to his feet +</A> +</H4> + +<H4 STYLE="margin-left: 15%; text-indent: -5%"> +<A HREF="#img-282"> +All at once the hound flung up his great head with a<BR> + low howl, then, crouching, licked the nerveless<BR> + hand that hung down +</A> +</H4> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap01"></A> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +THE LONG LANE'S TURNING +</H2> + +<BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER I +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +THE COUNSEL FOR THE DEFENCE +</H4> + +<P> +The dark was falling over the court-room. A lurid ray of the setting +sun gleamed redly on the dust-streaked window panes, and struggled +disconsolately with the melancholy gleam of the oil lamps that an +awkward attendant with creaking foot-leather had laboriously lighted in +their wall-brackets. Their pale radiance gleamed on the painted faces +of dead jurists that looked down from fly-specked canvases on the walls +and was reflected from the mass of moving, living faces that filled the +room, whose eyes gazed alternately at the Judge's vacant seat, and at +the empty railed space that had penned in the restless jury now +considering their verdict in an upper room—to return again and again +to the spot where sat the man over whose dingy case a medley of voices +had declaimed and wrangled throughout that southern spring day. +</P> + +<P> +He sat slouched in his chair, his narrow, faded-blue eyes, strained and +frightened, fixed on the empty jury-box, his uncertain hand lifting +from time to time to give a swift, furtive touch to his collar or a +thrust to his wiry, sand-coloured hair. In the pallid lamp-light the +hard sneer that had curved his lips during the dragging trial had faded +and his face seemed all at once piteous and younger. +</P> + +<P> +To a stranger there would have seemed little in the circumstances to +inspire the popular interest the full room betokened. The accused was +a rough sawyer, known to his fellows of the logging camp as "Paddy the +Brick," with a history of sluggishness and inebriety behind him. The +crime of which he stood charged was the theft of a comrade's earnings, +the story merely one of those sordid dramas of menial life which were +so familiar. The evidence, though purely circumstantial, was, to a +casual eye, sufficiently conclusive. +</P> + +<P> +Yet in the minds of most of those who had filled the dingy court room +during the two days just passed, there had been until the last hour a +general expectation that the man would be cleared. This had been based +upon nothing save the common knowledge that his counsel was Harry +Sevier. +</P> + +<P> +The latter had never failed to justify the expectations that had +habitually heralded his doings. Young, likable, perfectly equipped and +knowing his southern world, he had returned, after a half dozen years +of foreign schooling, to step into a social niche readily accorded him +by those who had seen little of him since boyhood. His grey eyes and +crisp, dark beard, had been distinguishing marks of forebears whose +lives had been lived in that neighbourhood and who had left their vivid +impress upon the institutions of their time; statesmen, diplomats and +soldiers had been of that line, and he himself, with his characteristic +mannerisms, his unimpeachable grooming, his nice observance of the +social code, had come to be regarded as the perfect pattern of his +type. Left an orphan at an early age, he had inherited a comfortable +property and the income of a city block, and he spent the money +judiciously, if lavishly. His Panhard was the swiftest car in town, as +his offices were the most sumptuous, though ostentatiously simple in +appointment. He had a Japanese valet, and the "at homes" which he +occasionally gave in his bachelor apartment, though they might be +dominated "pink teas" by the envious unbidden, were affairs to which an +<I>entrée</I> was a hallmark. He maintained also a shooting-box on an upper +slope of the Blue Ridge—a comfortable bungalow set in a hundred acres +of wilderness—whither of autumns he and a dozen other choice spirits +were wont to fare for a fortnight's tramping and fishing, sleeping on +pungent hemlock boughs and eating homely food cooked by the single +negro servant who lived there as caretaker. He had a gift for private +theatricals—he was in constant demand of the Amateur Dramatic +Club—and had more than a <I>dilettante</I> appreciation of music and art. +</P> + +<P> +As regards his profession, he had injected into the somewhat +cut-and-dried legal life of the old Capital an unusual and winning +element of personality and a method at variance with established usage. +His very eccentricities had set him apart from the mass, who were so +glamoured with the sordid things of life; and the apparent contempt for +material reward with which he defended poor and unknown clients as +readily as rich and influential ones had its appeal to a class which +possessed imagination and ideals. There had seldom been a case in +which he had not successfully employed a curious subterranean logic—an +apparently wilful insistence upon what seemed at first glance the +unvital and immaterial—as a preliminary to a swift <I>volte-face</I> by +which he turned the evidence at a new and unexpected angle of +inference, and drove home the doubt with a brilliant display of oratory +which captivated and—for the moment—convinced. In the four years in +which he had stamped his individuality upon the town, not only had he +never lost a criminal case, but he had created a certain conviction +that a trial in which he figured would offer unmistakable elements of +surprise and entertainment. So that the Criminal Court had come, in a +way, to be the fashion, and the sombre chambers of justice saw many an +assemblage that would have graced another sort of gathering. +</P> + +<P> +Seldom, however, on this day had Harry's glance through his gold-rimmed +eye-glasses wandered to the benches. With many there he had danced and +golfed and bridged a hundred times. That, however, had been play; +this, which had come to furnish another and quite as fascinating a sort +of entertainment for them, was what he had chosen to make the more +serious business—in so far as anything had been serious to him—of his +life. So that his apparent disregard of this tribute to his +personality for the sober business in hand, set over against the +palpable frivolity of purpose that actuated the moiety of his audience, +was, after all, only another indication to them of that fine sense of +the fitting for which his world admired him. +</P> + +<P> +Through the long morning the evidence had accumulated. One by one the +merciless rivets had been driven home by the prosecuting attorney. The +chain of evidence seemed flawless. And Harry Sevier's +cross-examination had seemed scarcely more than perfunctory—had +appeared somehow to miss that subtle and pregnant suggestion, that +longer reach that heretofore had uncovered a hitherto unnoted but +baffling doubt. Yet to those who knew him this but pointed to a more +effective climax, a more engrossing sensation when the psychological +moment should arrive and that appealing figure arise to insert the +nicely calculated spoke in the wheel that, under the manipulation of +the state's attorney, was rolling so swiftly in its ominous course; and +on the back-benches, where sat a group of members of the Country Club, +a whispered bet that the accused this time would not get off, found as +usual no taker. +</P> + +<P> +Evidence finished, the Court rose for a recess and Harry vanished +through a side-door. Ten minutes later he was in his office. He +vouchsafed no word to the clerk who sat in the outer room, but passed +quickly through to the inner sanctum and closed and locked the door. +The self-control bred of the strenuous occupation of the court room had +slipped now from his face, leaving it suddenly strained. There were +moist drops upon his forehead but his hands were arid and dry. He drew +the blind to shut out the dull, grey, winter light and switched on the +electric desk-lamp, and as he did so his eyes turned stealthily to the +wall—to a locked cabinet whose key was in his pocket. +</P> + +<P> +They turned again almost immediately to the baize-covered desk, where +stood a plain, flat silver frame. It held a photograph of a portrait +painted by Sargent which had been a <I>salon</I> favourite of a few years +before. It was that of a young girl, seated and leaning intently +forward from an arm chair. One hand was at her throat, the other +dropped against the dusky shoulder of a dog stretched at her feet, and +in her dark eyes was the eternal question which maidenhood asks of +life. The lines of the face were cameo-like, and its southern beauty +held that particular blend of ingeniousness and hauteur that is the +result of the selection and inbreeding of generations. He stood still +a moment, looking fixedly at it, his tongue touching his lips, before +he crossed the room and turned the picture face-down upon the desk. He +almost ran to the cabinet, unlocked its mirrored door, and took from it +a bottle and a glass. He poured out a full goblet of the gurgling +liquid and drank it off. Then he drew a long breath. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," he said, "I'll lie to myself no more! I've got to have it or +throw up the sponge. It was my own once, that wonderful gift—whatever +it is. Once it was my own brain, unhelped, that sent the glow to my +heart and the fire to my tongue—till words had glorious colours and +pictures painted themselves out of nothing. Once it was my own mind +that saw a problem as clear as crystal. But I wasn't content. I +wanted the short cut, and this showed me the way. And now—now—I've +dropped the reins. It's not Harry Sevier that wins cases—it's that +bottle!" +</P> + +<P> +He began to stride up and down the narrow room; deep lines had etched +themselves in the mobile face. "There was the Davencourt Case," he +said to himself. "Not a shred of decent evidence to go on, and the +whole court packed with prejudice, and he was as guilty as the devil. +Yet I won! That was only a year ago, but I couldn't do it now—without +what is in that decanter! All day yesterday I was heavy, my mind was +as blank as a glacier. In the cross-examination I couldn't see a foot +before me. But for this half-hour it would go hard with my client at +the finish. As it is I wouldn't want a better foil than old Maitland +for the prosecution. How he has slaved over his witnesses! I might +have made some of the testimony that sounded so damning look like a +cocked-hat if I had gone about it in his laborious way. For this +'Paddy the Brick' has plenty of friends, for all his crookedness. Half +the logging-camp, apparently, chipped in to make up my retaining-fee. +But pshaw! what's the use? I can get him off without it. In the last +analysis it's feeling, not facts, that will sway them—feeling first, +and then conscience. Every man of them must see <I>himself</I>, first +shivering in the shoes of my thief, and then wearing the Judge's gown. +When the psychological moment comes there is only to drive home the +fallibility of circumstantial evidence and sear those twelve +slow-going, matter-of-fact brains with a sense of the inherent +perversity of appearances!" He smiled bitterly. "Especially," he +added, "when there's whisky in the story. My client was drunk as a +boiled owl when he was arrested—the stolen plunder might easily have +been put on him, as he claims it was. The jury will understand that. +There's probably not a man on it who doesn't get squiffy now and then." +</P> + +<P> +He stopped in his walk and held up a hand against the light—it wavered +ever so little. The draught had not yet brought its accustomed poise +of nerve—its tense certitude, its mental glow and confidence. With an +impatient gesture he turned again to the cabinet. "One used to do it," +he said; "it will evidently take more to-day to restore our bold Turpin +to his career on the highway!" He set the empty glass in its place +with a short laugh. +</P> + +<P> +"Curious," he said. "If he <I>were</I> innocent and drink <I>had</I> got him +into this scrape, there would be a poetic justice in drink's getting +him out!" +</P> + +<P> +As he turned to lock the cabinet, the bell of his desk-telephone +rang—three short, sharp rings. It was the clerk's warning that the +court was about to reassemble. He drew a deep breath, and cast a quick +glance at the little mirrored door. No tinge was rising in his +colourless face, no warming tingle in his veins. His hands were +uncertain and his fingers had an odd numbness. A keen, cold edge of +anxiety touched him. Always heretofore, when he had sat with the black +decanter, he had felt the wonderful, slow change—the gradual glow +creeping through every nerve, the tightening of muscle and sinew as for +a race, the thrilling, glad sense of renewed power and unleashed +ability and the inevitable quivering rush of lambent images in his +brain. The signal was too long in coming to-day—and he could not +wait! His hand shook as it reached again to the little shelf. An +instant he hesitated—for a breath, while the light twinkled from the +deep-cut facets, he strove to remember whether he had drunk one glass +or two. Then with a frown he poured the draught and drinking it off, +locked the cabinet, and went hurriedly out. +</P> + +<P> +When he entered the courtroom, the wide space had filled again and the +State's Attorney had opened his address—a brief one, icily emotionless +and rigidly exact—the very background upon which so often Harry +Sevier's winged words had spelled victory for a cause prejudged as +lost. And he was to reply—with the final speech for whose inspiration +he had fled to that locked cabinet in the darkened inner-office. Paddy +the Brick listened with the look of some trapped thing gazing at its +captor, sometimes turning toward his counsel a furtive wavering glance +that was blent equally of dread and dog-like appeal. These glances +were unreturned. Harry Sevier sat motionless, his eyes straight before +him. +</P> + +<P> +But behind that mask Harry's thought was turning and turning upon +itself. The sudden sharp edge of anxiety that had caught him in his +office had grown to a thriving fear. His ally was failing him. The +master, whose upper hand he had just acknowledged—whose aid had been +so freely given him in really vital moments—was forsaking him at the +turn of a wretched, second-rate case of common thievery! He realised +it with a sickening sense of wonder that mingled with a dull anger at +the littleness of the issue, and through the confused mist of his mind +his inner ear seemed to hear a far-distant sardonic laughter—as though +the Djin of the bottle laughed in the locked wall-cabinet at his dismay. +</P> + +<P> +He rose to speak for the defence with an icy clog upon his faculties, +while beneath that frozen surface the something that had been shackled +reared and struggled vainly. Vocabulary, cunning of phrase, and +logical sequence of argument had not deserted him; he realised this +with a blind rage that seemed with a singular separateness to lie +outside of himself—to associate itself strangely with the prisoner. +But the persuasion that had so often checkmated justice, the calculated +force, the insinuating tactfulness, the living, warm appeal that had +had their way in the past were absent. He had a curious feeling of +duality, as though two Harry Seviers had suddenly and painfully drawn +apart—the one whose measured voice was speaking, and the other which +clamoured and appealed, conscious only of its own deadly smother and of +the despairing face of the man with the wiry sand-coloured hair who sat +slouched in his chair beside him. +</P> + +<P> +The roomful seemed very still. The Judge was looking at him fixedly, +through bowed horn-glasses set far down on his nose. Harry was aware +that in the countenance of the state's attorney puzzle and a stealthy +relief struggled together. With desperate narrowness he watched the +faces of the jury for a sign, a tentative withdrawal of stolidity that +betokened a quickened and awakening interest. But they sat moveless +and impassive. There was a last hideous pause, in which he thought the +foreman suppressed an incipient yawn, when his own brain refused +further struggle. He knew that he had been betrayed. The door of +human sympathy would not open—he had lost the magic key. +</P> + +<P> +The reply of the State's Attorney was a mere <I>résumé</I> of the evidence. +He had needed no more. The Judge's charge was brief. Then had come +the stir of moving bodies and the buzz of whispers—the shuffling of +feet as the Judge retired and the jurors filed out—and at length the +painful hiatus with the red sunlight and the pallid lamps. +</P> + +<P> +This was broken presently by three measured raps on the door of the +jury-room, which, as the Judge re-entered, opened to admit the jurors. +They were quickly polled and the verdict given—guilty. The sentence +followed immediately. +</P> + +<P> +With the fateful words Harry Sevier turned his eyes, almost as if +suddenly awakening from sleep, upon the court-room, and met across the +moving benches a woman's concentrated and wondering look. She was Echo +Allen, the original of the portrait whose photograph lay face-down upon +his office desk. The neutral-tinted presentment, however, had been far +from realising the concrete flush of sensuous beauty of its living +original, with her straight lithe frame, her hair all a wash of warm +russets and sunny golds, framing a face perfect in contour and with a +complexion as soft as a moth's wing. And the beauty of this was now +deepened, if possible, by the shadow upon it of puzzled pain and +inquiry. An instant the gaze between them hung, then it broke as she +turned away, gathering her white furs about her throat with a slow, +hesitant gesture. With the sudden stab of shame and humiliation that +rushed through him—for he had not seen her there before that +moment—something seemed to break, too, in Harry's brain; it was the +rigid lock which had been somehow put upon his faculties. The emptying +room felt all at once a furnace, and little jerking shocks, like tiny +electric currents, were running over him, prickling to the tips of his +fingers. Intoxication was upon him, sudden and overwhelming, but he +did not recognise it. He had never been drunk, in the sense popularly +understood. He had always regarded with wondering distaste the +occasional abject surrender of mind and body to the effect of alcohol +with which he was familiar in men of his class, and the vulgar spree +filled him with disgust. He was nicely abstemious at his club and he +had never entered a saloon in his life. His indulgences, deeper and +more and more frequent as they had grown of late, had been hidden +behind the shades of his inner office, and the liquor he had drunk +there he had never carried in his legs. For him these cloistered hours +had meant no harrowing aftermath of remorse, no shrinking memory of +license or ribaldry, but only the strange mental exaltation that had +borne him to success. He sat now outwardly calm and collected, but +mentally in an odd confusion, grasping at strange alert suggestions +that were thronging about him in a lurid phantasmagoria. +</P> + +<P> +He came to his feet with a start, suddenly aware that the slouching +figure beside him had arisen at the heavy touch of the sheriff's hand. +He took a step forward, the lawyer for a moment again uppermost, the +perplexed mind groping for the conventional expression of professional +regret. But he did not speak. Instead, as the narrow, red-rimmed eyes +stared for a breath into his, Harry's outstretched hand fell at his +side and a painful blur swept across his vision. His unsober, +kaleidoscopic mind had opened to something that lay naked and anguished +beneath the haggard face of the prisoner, something no longer glossed +by sullen scowl and sneering bravado—a concrete fact, perturbing and +vaguely horrifying, which would not express itself in mental symbols. +</P> + +<P> +With hands clenched and a face like a sleepwalker's, Sevier crossed the +emptying room to the side door, where his motor now waited. "Anywhere, +Bob," he said thickly, "but go like the devil till I tell you to stop, +if it's a thousand miles!" +</P> + +<P> +As the burnished mechanism shot into pace and the cool wind stung his +face, the early arc-lights above the roadway swelled to great pallid +moons tangled in a net of stars, and in their yellow lustre the thing +he had seen in the prisoner's face suddenly shouted itself to his +brain. He flung up an arm as though to ward a blow. +</P> + +<P> +"He wasn't guilty!" he gasped. "He never did it, by God!" +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap02"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER II +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +A MAN AND A WOMAN +</H4> + +<P> +The girl whose gaze had for that instant found Harry Sevier's across +the crowded court room left the place with her mind in a conflict of +feeling. She was nonplussed. She had entered for that last hour +sharing intuitively the general belief that the prisoner would be +acquitted: a belief, founded like that of the rest, upon her knowledge +of his counsel. She had seen no straining for the spectacular in what +some had been wont to call "Harry Sevier's pyrotechnics," and on past +occasions on which she had heard him address a jury she had fallen +wholly under the spell of that peculiar magnetism that swayed all +alike. Aside from his continuous success in a calling with which her +whole life had been associated—her father, Judge Beverly Allen, was +Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and his father had been Chancellor +before him—with his brilliant way, his undenied leadership among his +fellows, he had been to her a dominant personality. She had not lacked +the masculine homage of a dozen others of their set, but Harry Sevier +had always been the imminent figure in her thought, and it had needed +no spoken word or promise between them to link her imagination wholly +to a future in which he reigned supreme. So that his failure to-day +had affected her strongly. +</P> + +<P> +On the dusky court house steps she stopped to exchange greetings with a +group who chatted there. They were full of the puzzle of Sevier's +failure, or laughingly rueful at their own discomfiture, and she +stopped but a moment before a negro coachman tucked her into a +carriage. As he climbed lumberingly to his seat and gathered up the +reins, a heavy, assured figure approached the curb. Cameron Craig was +big and broad and in his strong and arrogant face lines of conflict had +early etched themselves. He shook hands with her with a smile. +</P> + +<P> +"I didn't know you were in town," she said, with a trace of aloofness. +</P> + +<P> +"I'm here for only a day or two," he answered. "I had to talk a little +politics with my attorney, Mr. Treadwell. It's his busy day, it seems, +and as the mountain couldn't come to Mahomet, Mahomet came to the +mountain. So here I am at the halls of justice. It's been an +entertaining afternoon—the trial, I mean—but upon my word, I thought +at first I had strayed into a convention of the Daughters of the +Confederacy." +</P> + +<P> +She smiled, but it came with difficulty. "Oh, court has become a +social dissipation with us. It competes now with auction-bridge and +the fox-trot." +</P> + +<P> +"You tempt me to steal a purse or two," he said. "I love to hold the +centre of the stage. The only thing I've been charged with stealing so +far is an election, but one never knows to what heights he may rise. +If I pick your pocket will you come to my trial?" +</P> + +<P> +"If it were <I>my</I> pocket, I'd have to, wouldn't I?" +</P> + +<P> +He bowed smilingly and turned away, as the coachman flicked the tossing +manes with the tip of his whip. Looking over her shoulder, while the +horses whirled her away, Echo saw his big frame swinging up the steps +into the emptying building, every move expressive of virile strength +and conscious power. +</P> + +<P> +These were traits Cameron Craig had acquired through direct +inheritance. His father had come penniless, to a small town in the +adjoining state where, with calm assurance and without unnecessary +delay, he had married the neighbourhood's prettiest girl and pre-empted +a worn-out iron deposit with a tumble-down furnace, relic of a series +of disgusted British owners. With the same certainty of judgment he +had uncovered the lost ore, developed the property till it paid a +miraculous dividend, and died. He had been a man of one idea—the +"Works"—and had known and cared for nothing else. The son, however, +with his father's force and will, had inherited, with less praiseworthy +traits, a further ambition. The young Cameron Craig's first free act +after his schooling ended was to dispose of the iron plant and to throw +his money and his brain together into a group which now stood back of +the great Public Services Corporation that held in control the vested +interests of two states, exclusive of the railroads. At thirty he was +a personality that loomed large in organised politics, and might be +depended on to loom steadily larger to the end of the chapter. +</P> + +<P> +As he entered the old building now he was thinking of the face of the +girl he had just left, with its brilliant beauty and flashing youth. +</P> + +<P> +"Why not?" he said to himself. "She has birth and breeding, but I can +match them with things the world counts as high. I've never failed yet +to get what I wanted—if I wanted it enough!" His thoughts recurred to +the trial and to Harry Sevier. "Curious that nobody seemed to guess +what the matter was—none but me. But I know what that look back of +his eyes meant. The young fool! To have that gift—every thing right +in his hand—and then to throw it away. For that's what it will come +to, sure as fate, in the end!" +</P> + +<P> +A hand fell upon his shoulder. It was Lawrence Treadwell, the +attorney, and he followed the latter into a private room and sat down. +"Have you got the new committee list?" he asked, without preamble. +</P> + +<P> +For answer the other took a closely written paper from his pocket and +handed it over. "Senator Colby sent it down by his secretary this +morning." +</P> + +<P> +Craig drew his chair to the table and began to make pencilled changes +and corrections, his hand moving swiftly and unhesitatingly. "There," +he said, returning it. "That will be better. Let the senator have it +back to-morrow." He sat a moment silent, his strong white fingers +drumming on the table. "By the way, is this young Sevier likely to +take a hand in the next campaign?" +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know," replied the other. "I've always expected him to burst +into politics some day. He has a curious hold on people—a wonderful +magnetism. To-day's is the first jury case I've ever known him to +lose. He as well as let it go by default. How he came to handle it so +beats me!" +</P> + +<P> +Craig might have enlightened him, but he did not. +</P> + +<P> +"I've concluded we don't want him," he said. "He's uneven: the trial +to-day proved that. Besides, he's too high-chinned—we can't depend on +his type to obey orders. We are coming to a big fight and we want the +docks clear. No overtures to him. We must cut out every man whose +absolute footing we can't count on till the day of judgment." +</P> + +<P> +The attorney lit a cigar and regarded its blue haze thoughtfully before +he answered. "All right," he agreed. "I should have picked him for +good material. But you're the doctor." +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Meanwhile the carriage was whirling Echo Allen over the darkening +asphalt. The tired night lay still, watching under dusky lids, the +moon, a great blown magnolia, floating in the limpid sky. As the +horses pounded on, the coachman's voice broke in upon her revery: +</P> + +<P> +"Reck'n Marse Harry done got dat man clar, Miss Echo, lak he allus do?" +</P> + +<P> +She drew her furs closer about her throat with a little gesture as +though dismissing a baffling problem. "No, 'Lige; not this time." +</P> + +<P> +"Sho' now!" he exclaimed, looking back with his thick, blue-black lips +framed to a whistle. "Muss-a been pow'ful guilty ef <I>he</I> couldn't git +him off. Ah reck'n dem yuthah lawyahs 'cluded dey wanter tek Marse +Harry down—he done put it ovah <I>dem</I> so off'n—en dey jes' tek dat +'cused man, en fool eroun', en fool eroun', tell dey done <I>prove</I> it on +him!" +</P> + +<P> +But 'Lige's sage reflection upon the situation brought no smile to Echo +Allen's face. +</P> + +<P> +At length the horses came to a great double-gate, lighted with heavy +wrought-iron lamps, opening on a curving drive, into which they turned, +to swing panting up to a wide-porched mansion set in a grove of oaks +and acacias. This was "Midfields," the home of the Allens for four +generations and of the Beverlys before them. Its wide wings and +columned front spoke of old colony days, as did its name of a time when +rolling acres of tobacco instead of suburban streets surrounded it. +Twilight was drifting thickly over it now, and the box-hedged garden, +with its plenteous rose-shrubs and wild sun-dial, was purpled with +shadow. +</P> + +<P> +Echo jumped down without assistance and ran into the hall, throwing off +her hat and coat and pausing before a glass to pat into place the +rebellious whorls of her springing, gold-brown hair before she entered +the dimly-lighted library. +</P> + +<P> +It was a wide, pleasant room, with tradition and gentle birth in every +line of its furnishing. The table held an old China lamp of gilt and +<I>lapis-lazuli</I> blue, and the simple, colonial book-cases were of +rich-veined mahogany which held the same shimmering, tawny lights as +Echo's hair and had leaded-glass doors in key with the silver, +glass-prismed candle-sticks on the mantel-piece. A huge old English +screen of painted leather stood at one side. On the dull green walls +were framed steel engravings of the ancestral home of the Allens in +Dorsetshire and of that sturdy ancestor, in lace and peruke, whose +rugged signature is on the Declaration. The place had but one modern +touch—a splendid portrait of Echo herself that hung between two great +windows—the canvas whose photograph at that moment lay face-down in +Harry Sevier's inner office. +</P> + +<P> +In the room sat her father, the Judge, perusing a magazine. He was a +pale, placid man, straight and grey as a silver-birch, with ivory, +distinguished features that suggested an old daguerreotype and seemed +to call for a silk-velvet waistcoat and a stock. He tossed the +magazine aside as she came to him and stooping, in a swift birdlike way +she had, dropped a kiss on the top of his billowy, grey hair. +</P> + +<P> +"There you are," she chided, "ruining your poor eyes with fine print in +this wretched light!" +</P> + +<P> +She turned the reading-lamp higher and drew the curtains. As she +pulled the heavy folds together they swept from its place a heavy brass +bowl filled with Marechal Niel roses, and it fell with a crash onto a +frail Italian desk of dark rosewood quaintly inlaid with designs in +lighter colour, which sat in a corner. +</P> + +<P> +She sprang to catch it with a cry. "I'm as bad as Uncle Nelson!" she +exclaimed. "How lucky it didn't spill!" She set the bowl back and +passed a hand along the polished desk-top, frowning. "It has made a +terrific dent in the poor old thing!" she said, remorsefully. "It must +have jarred it frightfully. I'm so sorry!" She looked at her father, +who had half risen at her cry. "You were always fond of the little old +desk, though you never used it. I used to love it when I was a child. +It was so mysterious, with its tiny cubby-holes and carvings. Some one +told me once that such foreign desks always had secret drawers and I +used to spend hours trying to find one. Where did it come from? Did +it belong to grandfather?" +</P> + +<P> +"No. It was willed to me many years ago by—a friend. It was when you +were a baby." +</P> + +<P> +"How curious," she said, "for a man to choose a piece of furniture like +that! Why, it's as feminine as a toilet-table!" She came and perched +one small toe on the fender, as he asked: "Where's Nancy!" +</P> + +<P> +"I haven't seen her since luncheon. She was going to tea at Cora +Spottiswoode's." +</P> + +<P> +"Her father has written me she must come home at the end of the week," +said the Judge. "He says if she doesn't he'll start an action against +somebody for kidnapping—says nobody can fix his coffee just right but +her." +</P> + +<P> +She smiled. The two families were life-long friends and since their +boarding-school days she and Nancy Langham had exchanged annual visits. +"I'll tell her," she said. "I wish she could stay longer, though it's +lonely for her father, no doubt. I love to have her here. She's—fond +of Chilly, and I've been hoping it—might have an influence over him." +</P> + +<P> +The Judge sighed. The name of Chisholm Allen, Echo's twin-brother, was +a synonym in the city for debonair devil-may-care. With the likeliness +that kept him popular even among those staid members of society who did +not countenance his peccadillos, he combined a negligence and +dissipation that from his boyhood had made him a thorn-in-the-flesh to +his father. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," he said, "she's fond of him. That's why I think she shouldn't +stay too long." +</P> + +<P> +There was silence for a moment. Then he said in a lighter tone, "I +wonder how Sevier's case came out. It was expected to finish to-day, +wasn't it?" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh," she answered, "he lost. The jury found against him. I was there +for an hour, just at the end." +</P> + +<P> +He made an exclamation of surprise, and stole a quick glance at her, +but she had bent down to straighten a shoe-buckle and he could not see +her face. "Ah well," he said, "it won't do him any harm to get a +set-back now and then. Perhaps he needs it. Were there many there?" +</P> + +<P> +"Half the world," she answered. "I saw Cameron Craig." +</P> + +<P> +"So he is in town, eh? I must send a note to the hotel and ask him to +luncheon to-morrow." +</P> + +<P> +She was silent and he said quizzically. "Come, my dear, you mustn't be +such a chin-tilted patrician. 'Other times, other manners.' Craig has +his place, and it's not a low one, either." +</P> + +<P> +She made a move of impatience. "He's a member of the best clubs in his +own city, and all that, I know. He belongs there. But here it is +different. We are not beholden to him. Why should we go out of our +way to treat him like one of us? He isn't, really. He may be a +University man and he may have travelled all over the world. Yes, and +I'll admit he has manners—<I>a</I> manner, if you like—too. But there's +something that keeps him an outsider just the same. Besides, people +tell unpleasant tales about him." +</P> + +<P> +Her father cleared his throat. Gossip had been prolific in tales of +Craig as regarded the fairer—and frailer—sex. He had heard the +stories—unsavoury ones, such as inevitably cling to men, whatever +their business or social standing, who acquire the whispered reputation +of the voluptuary. He had himself, however, a singular reserve of +judgment, coupled with an impatient intolerance of scandal. Men to him +were as he found them, till the event proved otherwise. +</P> + +<P> +"I know what you mean," he said judicially. "He hasn't our traditions +and standards. That's true. He's not born to them. But this is an +uncharitable world, my dear, and half the tattle one hears is apt to be +sheer envy. He is a person of importance. He has a good deal of +influence, as well as money, and is affiliated with men with whom a +large part of my earlier life was associated." +</P> + +<P> +She hardly heard his closing words: "Influence and money!" she +repeated, with a little shrug. "Why need we bother about them! The +Judiciary, thank heaven! has nothing to do with political influence, +and as for money, I should hate to think that what we have came, like +his, from the United Distilleries!" +</P> + +<P> +"Echo!" The name fell sharply behind them. +</P> + +<P> +Both turned—the Judge a little self-consciously—to where his wife +stood in the doorway. She was already dressed for dinner and her dark +corsage set off her white neck and beautifully rounded shoulders—a +cool, statuesque woman, of unfailing poise and manner, with her grey +hair perfectly disposed above a complexion whose tinting was the +despair of many a younger matron. Instinctively the girl's hand had +crept into the Judge's arm, and insensibly the two had drawn a shade +nearer together. +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Allen stood looking at them a moment, faintly smiling, before she +said deliberately, "That is a ridiculous way of talking. Please let me +remind you that your father was the Trust's counsel for many years, and +until he went on the Bench." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I forgot—" she began, distressed. "I only meant—" +</P> + +<P> +"There, there!" the Judge said, frowning. "People feel differently +about those things. You have a perfect right to think in that way, if +you choose." +</P> + +<P> +"I couldn't think anything <I>you</I> did was wrong," she cried +passionately. "And, anyway, giving a company legal advice is very far +from being in its business. <I>Every one</I> has to have lawyers, of +course. They defend even criminals." +</P> + +<P> +He smiled quizzically at her argument. "Well," he countered, "I'm +respectable in my old age, at any rate." He had pressed a bell as he +spoke and to the grizzled negro who now entered he said, "Nelson, has +your Marse Chilly come in yet? If he has I'd like to see him." +</P> + +<P> +The old man shook his head. "Marse Chilly done tellyfoam he won' be +home fo' dinnah, suh." +</P> + +<P> +The Judge pulled his chin, palpably annoyed, but quick to his resentful +mood, Echo laid her hand caressingly on his arm. +</P> + +<P> +"Never mind, dear," she said coaxingly. "Don't fret about Chilly." +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Allen's voice interposed. "Chilly sent me the message an hour +ago," she said, with an accent that seemed finally to dismiss the +topic. "I think you would better dress now, Echo. Nancy has been in +some time, and dinner's at seven-thirty." +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap03"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER III +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +THE AWAKENING +</H4> + +<P> +An automobile speeding through the starry dark! No hesitant progress +through congested traffic, no frequent swerving for daylight wayfarers. +The city was far behind now—only the clear, well-nigh deserted road, +winding like a tremulous magenta ribbon through the swooping gloom that +seemed to shrink and cringe from the metal monster hurtling after its +golden halo through the eddying dust. +</P> + +<P> +A practised hand was on the throttle and the yellow-lined face bent +over the wheel was shrewd and keen. There had been no supper for Bob +that night and no evening at Black Joe's billiard parlour, but the +chauffeur knew his master. "Go like the devil till I tell you to +stop," the other had said, and without the word from the moveless +figure on the rear seat, he would obey till the engine stopped or his +hand went numb on the wheel. Hamlets flashed by—huddles of flaring +street-lights—then shadow and blankness again. Now and then a hollow +rumbling marked a bridge, or a jovial, beckoning doorway betokened a +road-house. Ten, twenty, thirty miles. A turn of the wheel and the +car swept into a divergent highway. Another mile and again a turn—Bob +was shuttling back and forth now, fearful of an impossible distance +from home. +</P> + +<P> +The man behind him sat as if graven in stone. At first, while his +senses instinctively resisted the intoxication, Harry had been +conscious only of blind movement, a frantic flight to escape the +unescapable. Yet his whole body was tense, his eyes never wavered, his +hand was as steady as his chauffeur's. He was sharply conscious of all +about him, every sense recording its message unerringly. He felt the +wind-flung dust, heard the chatter of the exhaust, grasped acutely at +each detail of sight and sound in the reeling panorama through which +they passed with such arrow-like swiftness, under a sky that was a +wild, blue field of silver flowers. Yet the governance of the mind, +the sole arena in which the intoxicant ravened and rioted, the logical +faculty to which sense-impression is but material, was astray. And at +length the intoxication had wholly conquered. +</P> + +<P> +And with the acknowledged dominance of the sinister thing that held +him, the mental turmoil had swiftly stilled. There had come sudden +composure—a strange, appalling peace, in which was no appreciation of +place or time or fact, but yet a curious exaltation, a sensation of +seeing not through a glass darkly, but with a further mental vision +which knew no material bars. +</P> + +<P> +Three hours, four hours—and still no sign. Bob stole a glance behind +him. "Wonder what's the matter?" he muttered. "He sure never did want +to go hell-bent-for-election like this before. Lucky I filled the tank +plumb full this morning. She's good for another forty mile, I reckon." +</P> + +<P> +As he withdrew his eyes he became aware of a red light swinging down +into the road—a railway-crossing. He threw himself forward on the +gear and with a grinding roar the brakes took hold. Plunging and +shuddering, the car stopped dead, its forward lamps jingling against +the warning bar. +</P> + +<P> +With the sudden stop Harry lurched forward. And, curiously, with the +abrupt cessation of motion and roar, the vast, vague distance through +which his mind had been shuttling, closed instantly up. The baleful +intoxication had lifted as it had come. He did not wake fully at once, +for the breaking of the spell left him in a strange confusion through +which he saw but dimly the outlines of the real present. He found +himself sitting dazed and shaken in his motor—staring at the broad +back of his chauffeur beyond which, an isolated point in the darkness +of the night, swung the angry red lantern of the crossing. He put a +hand to his forehead—what was he doing there? +</P> + +<P> +It was coming back to him. He remembered the straining trial, the hour +in his inner office—with the little wall-cabinet! He saw the crowded +courtroom, saw himself standing impotent before the bar, saw the +despairing face of the man beside him, the puzzled countenances about +him, the dim lamps. He heard verdict and sentence. He saw himself +turn to gaze into the face of the girl across the court-room—knew the +swift rush of the motor, the blazing arc lights and that final stab of +realisation! +</P> + +<P> +His lips tightened to shut back something like a groan, as there rushed +upon him a sense of horror, of disgust, of shame. The Harry Sevier he +had been—the Harry Sevier of good repute, of disdain for the +intemperate, of brilliant accomplishment and regular habit, was gazing +with horrified eyes at the Harry Sevier he had unwittingly become, the +slave of the spirit he had so long invoked, whose coarse debauch had +to-day betrayed his client, and sent an innocent man to the wretched +cell of a convict! +</P> + +<P> +He spoke. "Bob, where are we?" +</P> + +<P> +The chauffeur stole a quick glance behind him—there was relief in it. +"Penitentiary-Crossing, sir," he said. "There's the Black Maria." He +pointed to one side, where the gloomy vehicle, a wheeled ark with a +narrow barred window set in its rear, waited with its patient mules. +</P> + +<P> +The train was at the crossing now and the rumble of the brakes swelled +to a vibrant screech, the long dotted line of dimly-lighted windows +shuddering to a stop right athwart the road. A train-man with a +lantern jumped down, followed by a couple of passengers. Harry opened +the door of the tonneau and suddenly conscious that he was stiff and +aching in every joint, achieved the ground and took a step toward the +train. +</P> + +<P> +Two figures just then emerged from the glare. He saw that they were +linked together by a wrist and as the coat of one blew aside, the +lights of the motor glinted from a nickel star—the badge of a +deputy-sheriff. They had passed him, and the train was moving again to +the <I>chug-chug</I> of the engine, when the officer turned back, biting the +end from a cigar. +</P> + +<P> +"Could you give me a light?" he asked. +</P> + +<P> +"Certainly." Sevier took a silver match-box from his pocket. +</P> + +<P> +The other struck the match, hauling irritably at his lagging prisoner, +and the red light, flaring up, for an instant showed the two faces, the +sheriff's grim and tenacious, and the one beside it—a white, dogged +face, with red-rimmed eyes and a shock of sand-coloured hair. +</P> + +<P> +Sevier shrank as though at a blow in the face. He drew a sharp breath, +for the sight pierced to the excoriate spot that lay like a live coal +in his soul. There before him stood his client of that day's trial, on +the last lap of his dismal journey, the man whom he, Harry Sevier, had +sent there! Back of this man of the law, with his gleaming star and +pocket revolver, he saw himself standing, the real mainspring of that +blatant enginery. +</P> + +<P> +The flare of the match fell. "Well, good night to you," said the +deputy-sheriff. +</P> + +<P> +"Hold on," said Harry. "Can a prisoner use money?" +</P> + +<P> +"They're not supposed to, but I reckon money talks as loud in a +concrete cell as anywhere else." +</P> + +<P> +Sevier had taken some crisp yellow-backs from his pocket and now he +held them out—to the jailbird. "Here!" he said. "Take this." +</P> + +<P> +The other looked at the bills with a suddenly contorted face, then with +a whirl of his unfettered hand dashed them on the ground. "Keep your +money!" he snarled. "I'm a thief—that's what <I>I</I> am now! When I want +money I'll steal it!" +</P> + +<P> +The sheriff made an exclamation, and jerked viciously on the tethered +wrist. "Don't you mind, sir," he said. "You mean it well, but this is +an ugly one. Lord love you, they'll soon take that out of him over +there! Come along, you," he added to the other, pulling him toward the +Black Maria, "and if you open your face like that I'll give you what +for!" +</P> + +<P> +Sevier stood an instant looking dully after them, then mechanically +picked up the fallen bills, fumblingly replaced them in his pocket, and +climbed into the motor. He felt his face suddenly hot. In those flung +words his judicial mind recognised the indictment. From the little +wall-cabinet in his inner-office had crept a thing of shame and +humiliation to himself. He saw this now suddenly swell and grow—as +did the vapour from the fisherman's cruse—to a blighting, tentacled +thing, reaching interminably into the future, holding in its coils a +human life of pain, of desperate warfare, of social outlawry. +</P> + +<P> +He sat down on the leather cushions like one in a dream. +</P> + +<P> +"Home now, Bob," he said, heavily. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap04"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER IV +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +THE PRODIGAL +</H4> + +<P> +At Midfields that evening the late moonlight poured a flood of radiance +on the wide columned porch with its climbing roses where Echo sat on +the step, chin in hand, absorbed in her own thought. She was alone. +Nancy had slipped off to bed, her mother had retired to her room and +her father to the quiet of the library and his reading. +</P> + +<P> +From the kitchens she could hear the muffled clash of table-silver and +the strident voice of Aunt Emily the cook, grumbling at Nelson: +"Yo'-all hurry erlong wid dem ar fawks, now! Speck ah's gwine wait +heah all <I>night</I>, yo' triflin' trash, yo'? Yo' heah me—yo' ain' +blind! What yo' 'spose Marse Bev'ly <I>pay</I> yo' fo', anyhow?" From far +down the road, beyond the gates, she could hear the faint twang of a +guitar and the refrain of strolling, darky voices: +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +"Reign! Reign! Reign-a mah Lawd!<BR> + Reign, Marse Jesus, reign!<BR> +Reign salvation in-a mah soul,<BR> + Reign, Marse Jesus, reign!"<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +These died away with the sharp, eager bark of a dog. Then at length +distinguishable sounds faded and there was only the deep, somnolent +peace of the southern night, with the scent of the roses wreathing the +garden with their intense, mystical odour—only the faint stirring of +little leaves playing hide-and-seek with their shadows, and the thin, +fairy tone-carpet woven by the myriad looms of night insects for near +whispers to tread on. +</P> + +<P> +Since that homeward ride she had had no time to ponder upon the event +of the day. At dinner the trial had been touched upon but casually. +Now that she was alone, however, it had rushed uppermost in her +thought. It was not that Harry Sevier had lost the verdict: but his +speech had seemed to her, in the tension of the crisis, with a man's +honour and liberty at stake, inconsequential and almost flippant. And +in the measure of her disappointment she had realised anew the depth of +her regard for him. Again and again she pictured the scene in the +courtroom but each time her thought returned upon itself, baffled and +puzzled. +</P> + +<P> +At length, with a long breath that was almost a sigh, she stirred, and +rising, passed into the library where the Judge sat in the arm-chair by +his reading lamp. "You're a disgraceful night-owl," she said, "and I +refuse to keep you in countenance any longer." +</P> + +<P> +He smiled at her. "That's right, Sorrel-Top! It's time for +beauty-sleep if you and Nancy are off to ride in the morning. Just +give me my eye-shade, will you, before you go?" +</P> + +<P> +She brought the green crescent and snapped it on his forehead. "There! +You haven't told me how you like my dress to-night. It's a new one." +</P> + +<P> +He looked. "It's beautiful." +</P> + +<P> +She turned about before him. "I do choose well sometimes, don't I?" +</P> + +<P> +"You do everything well, my dear." In his tone now was a quaint and +curious humility which always touched her when she discerned +it—something of utter fondness and dependance—and she smoothed his +iron-grey hair, one of her characteristic endearments, as she kissed +him good night. +</P> + +<P> +Upstairs Echo opened the door of her room softly. It was hung in +blue—that shade which one sees in a Gainsborough ribbon, a Romney sash +or a Reynolds sky—and its furniture was of simple white, with large +pink dahlias trailing over the chintz window-curtains and +chair-cushions. In the dim night-light the triple mirror of the +dresser reflected the carven four-post bed, in one of whose pillows +Nancy's dark head was already buried. +</P> + +<P> +"Is that you, Echo?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, it's I. Were you asleep already?" +</P> + +<P> +"Almost," yawned Nancy. "I <I>shall</I> be in two shakes of a lamb's tail. +Has Chilly come home yet?" +</P> + +<P> +"No, not yet." +</P> + +<P> +"Do you think he's really at the club, Echo?" +</P> + +<P> +"Of course I do." +</P> + +<P> +"Men are so queer!" sighed Nancy, drowsily. "We had such a lovely +evening—all except Chilly's not being there." +</P> + +<P> +Echo slipped off her gown and drew out the pins from her hair, letting +it fall in a shimmering cloud to her waist. Then in the moon-light she +drew a deep chair before the open window and began to brush out that +wonderful mass of stirring gold that curled and waved about her bare, +round shoulders. Below her the garden lay, a mass of olive shadows, +wound in cloudy golds and misty greens, sprinkled with moon-dust and +drenched with the dizzying scent of roses and honeysuckle. All was +lapped in the utter quiet of the night—only the swift wing of a +night-bird shook the darker clump of ivy that marked the sun-dial. A +long time she sat there, the brush parting and smoothing the bronze +mesh with long sweeping movements, gazing into the whisper-haunted +gloom and listening to the measured breathing of the girl behind her +that seemed to form a rhythmical current for her own thoughts. +</P> + +<P> +All at once in the hush there came the clashing of the gate at the foot +of the drive and jovial "good-byes," mingled with a hilarious voice +asseverating that its owner had had "the time of his young life." +</P> + +<P> +She bit her lip. "It's Chilly!" she whispered, with a frowning look +over her shoulder. +</P> + +<P> +She listened intently. There was the crunch of an uncertain step on +the gravel, the sound of a stumble from the porch—then the slamming of +the front door. +</P> + +<P> +The dulled sound reverberated through the old house. It roused Nancy +and she sat upright in the drift of silken coverlets, her eyes heavy +with sleep. "Is it Chilly?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes. He has just come in." +</P> + +<P> +"Is he—?" +</P> + +<P> +"I'm afraid so, dear." +</P> + +<P> +The younger girl caught her breath. "Oh, I hope your father has gone +to bed. He's so hard on him!" +</P> + +<P> +Echo turned. "How can he be otherwise?" she said, sadly. "It's so +often and often it happens, nowadays. Won't you try and influence him? +He cares for you, darling!" +</P> + +<P> +Nancy's hands were clasped tight about her knees. She stirred +uneasily. "How can I, Echo? A boy has to have a little bit of a good +time once in awhile. I wouldn't want him to be a molly-coddle! He +won't be any the worse for it when he gets older and settled down." +</P> + +<P> +"The worse for it!" The words fell sadly. "Don't you think he is the +worse for it already? He's making no progress with his law-study and +he's been two years out of college, now. There's nothing to blame but +his drinking—and the company he keeps. What will be the end of it? +Oh, Nancy, you have a responsibility. Every woman has with some one +man. If women only wouldn't countenance it as they do!" +</P> + +<P> +"But, Echo—you talk as if Chilly was—as if you thought he was doing +something disgraceful. Why, he's a gentleman; he <I>couldn't</I> be +anything but that, no matter what he did!" +</P> + +<P> +Echo came to the bed and sat down beside the other. In her filmy +night-gown, wound in the mist of her loosened gold shadowed hair she +looked like some ethereal thing in the moonlight. +</P> + +<P> +"Ah, that's just what so many say! That a gentleman is a gentleman +whether he is drunk or sober! It's not so with other things. Is a +gentleman a gentleman whether he lies, or cheats at cards, or not? +Isn't there to be any standard, really? Don't you see that there never +will be any penalty—as far as drinking is concerned—until women +<I>make</I> it? Listen, Nancy. The year I came out, I went to a dance—my +first big one. There was a boy there who followed me about all over +the floor. He wanted me to dance with him, and he was—he could hardly +walk. At first I was frightened, but at last I grew angry. I asked a +lady why he was not asked to leave the floor. She seemed quite +astonished and indignant. 'But,' she said, 'don't you know who he +<I>is</I>? That's the son of General Moultrie!' It was Cale Moultrie. You +know what became of him, don't you?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes." Nancy's voice was muffled. "But Chilly—" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, my dear, there was a time when Cale drank no more than the others, +and everybody liked him—as they do Chilly. It's coming to be the same +with him, I'm afraid. There's no penalty for him yet because he's +Chisholm Allen—because he's father's son!" +</P> + +<P> +She stopped, caught by the sound of a sob. In another moment her arms +were around the frail little body and the flower-like face was pressed +hard against her breast. +</P> + +<P> +"I don't care if he <I>is</I> d-d-dissipated," said Nancy passionately. +"I'd rather have him come to me d-d-drunk than any other man sober! +He's just Ch-Ch-Chilly, all the same!" +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap05"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER V +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +THE UNLAID GHOST +</H4> + +<P> +On the ground floor of the old house all was silent save in the +dining-room, where a single electric bulb threw into garish relief the +dismantled table with a bowl of fern glowing like a fountain of +emeralds against the dark wood. It lighted the Chippendale sideboard, +before which Chisholm Allen confronted old Nelson, the butler. A +cut-glass decanter of sherry was in one hand; the other was alternately +fumbling uncertainly with the stopper and pushing back the persuasive +fingers of the aged negro. His straw hat was tipped awry, his face was +flushed and his eyes unnaturally bright. He was laughing immoderately. +</P> + +<P> +"You old black stick-in-the-mud!" he said. "What's the matter with +you? Think <I>you</I> own that decanter, eh? Well, you don't, not by a +long shot. <I>I</I> do—Chris'mas present from the Duchess. Hope to die if +it wasn't. Leggo, you virtuous old chicken-thief, and give me a +tumbler!" +</P> + +<P> +"Now, Marse Chilly!" The low voice was deprecating and appealing, and +there was love in it too—the deep, changeless affection of the +old-time negro for his white master. "Yo' <I>knows</I> yo' don' want no mo' +dat ar. Yo' done had er plenty at dat ole club down town. Ef yo' tuck +away any mo' now, yo' gwine have er haid lak er rainbar'l on yo' +shouldahs in dee mawnin'! Yo' <I>knows</I> yo' is!" +</P> + +<P> +Chilly's hand dragged at the black detaining fingers. "What do <I>you</I> +know about heads? Take your fool hands away, I tell you! I'm only +going to take a couple of swallows." +</P> + +<P> +"<I>Ah</I> knows dem ar swallers," pleaded the old man. "Yo' go erlong tuh +baid. Hit's long pas' midnight. Marse Bev-ly's in dee lib'ry." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh bother!" said Chilly irreverently. "He's gone to bye-bye long ago. +Shut your face or you'll wake him up." +</P> + +<P> +"Fo' dee <I>Lawd</I>, Marse Chilly!" stuttered the old man. "Ah heahs him +comin' <I>now</I>! Ah sho' does!" +</P> + +<P> +"You can't bamboozle me!" laughed Chilly. "Old Huckleberry's been +snoozing this hour! If he does come, you and I'll drink his health. +Eh? Wonder what he'd say!" +</P> + +<P> +He was not to be left in doubt, for at the moment the hall-door opened. +His father stood on the threshold. He was dressed and the green +eyeshade was on his forehead. +</P> + +<P> +"We will dispense," he said in a tone of quiet hardness, "with a +ceremony which, however filial, is somewhat ill-timed. Nelson, I think +you needn't wait up any longer." +</P> + +<P> +"Yas, Marse Bev'ly. Yas, suh." The old man went to the door, +hesitated and came back. "Is yo' sho' yo' don' want nothin' else, +Marse Bev'ly?" +</P> + +<P> +"Nothing further, Nelson." +</P> + +<P> +"Yas, suh. Good night, Marse Bev'ly. Good night, Marse Chilly." This +time he went out, closing the door behind him with exaggerated caution. +</P> + +<P> +"Come now, Judge," said his son, still mirthfully. "There's no masonic +funeral going on in the bungalow, is there? Can't one have a harmless +night-cap without being excommunicated?" +</P> + +<P> +His father looked at him from under the green shade with gloomy +disapproval. The address did not tend to mend matters; his son was +wont to reserve the judicial title for moods of especial mellowness +such as to-night's. He noted the flushed face and sparkling eyes, the +general air of goodnatured recklessness that so clearly spoke the +nature of the other's evening's pleasure. +</P> + +<P> +"We'll discuss that to-morrow." He crossed to the wall and laid his +hand on the electric switch. "Good night." +</P> + +<P> +Chisholm still smiled without apparent resentment. "I guess you +weren't ever as young as I am, Judge, anyway. You seem to think I'm a +rotten bad lot just because I like to take a glass now and then and go +out with the boys. You drink <I>your</I> mint-julep all right enough. And +I'll bet whoever you had to dinner to-night took as much as I've had +under my vest. The only difference is <I>I</I> haven't had any dinner. It +does make a difference, I assure you." +</P> + +<P> +His father's hand was still extended to the wall. "I said good night, +Chisholm." +</P> + +<P> +Chilly shrugged his shoulders. "Oh, what's the use?" he said +listlessly, and went unsteadily out by the rear door. +</P> + +<P> +The Judge snapped off the switch, and putting out the light in the +library, ascended the stair. The hard look had deepened on his face. +As he gazed at that nonchalant epitome of ribaldry he had thought of +other men who had so often been grouped about the table in that +room—men of tempered habit, of standing and achievement. His own son +had contempt for such company. It bored him. He preferred to "go out +with the boys" and to come home in the small hours—as he had to-night. +So he was thinking as he entered the room above. There he stopped in +surprise, for across the threshold stood his wife. She was in her +night-gown, over which she had thrown a robe of pale crêpe with lace at +the neck and wrists. Her face showed a heightened colour and her lips +were trembling. He drew forward a chair. +</P> + +<P> +"I thought you were asleep long ago," he said. +</P> + +<P> +She declined the seat with a gesture. "I heard your voices. What did +you say to Chilly?" +</P> + +<P> +"I said 'Good night,'" he answered heavily. "That was about all." +</P> + +<P> +Her lip curled. The glance she gave him was critically cold. When she +married Beverly Allen she had loved him—in so far as she had been +capable of loving. To her marriage had meant the assumption of woman's +predestined place in the social fabric, the inevitable change of habit +which time brings to all, with its widened orbit and opportunities. +She had been drawn to him by every instinct of selection which took +count of name, standing, worldly endowment and mental equipment; but +there had been behind it no throb of maidenly impulse, no thrill of the +great current that feeds the romance of the world. The one point at +which life for her caught and focused had been the son, whose +misconduct stood so sharply out against the spotless Allen name. He +was her one weakness, her love for him an unreasoning passion that had +swayed her from his birth. To her his transgressions showed as venial, +his delinquencies as but the forgivable errors of youth. The few +instances in which he had been openly called to task by his father had +been sharpened in the latter's memory by her resentment. But on none +of these occasions had her husband seen her so moved as now. He did +not know that for many minutes she had stood on the dark landing +listening to the murmurous voices, and that now she resented what +seemed to her a deliberate evasion. She spoke with slow, even point: +</P> + +<P> +"As a monologist Chilly is a distinct surprise. Was he saying 'good +night' also?" +</P> + +<P> +Under the unaccustomed anger of her voice the Judge's pale face +flushed. He took off the eyeshade and set it on the table, as he +replied evenly: +</P> + +<P> +"Chilly is not himself to-night, Charlotte. Does it matter +particularly what he said?" +</P> + +<P> +Beneath his voice now there was a kind of subterranean compassion, a +note almost of entreaty, as though in this trouble that touched them +both he could have wished to comfort her, if, indeed, she had made that +possible. +</P> + +<P> +She made an involuntary movement—not a sign that a chord had been +touched, but rather a mark of agitation. Chilly was the one subject +upon which she could not bring to bear the tempered reason which +otherwise marshalled her even life. It seemed to her now that she was +being thrust aside, in the interest of some new plan of discipline and +coertion. She turned swiftly on her husband. +</P> + +<P> +"I suppose you think it should make no difference to me!" Her eyes +blazed. "You are so sure you understand Chilly! You—his father—have +you ever really known him all his life? Does he ever come to you when +he is in trouble or needs advice?" +</P> + +<P> +Her voice held a bitter sarcasm and again the flush swept up the +Judge's pale face. But his voice was emotionless as he said, "Chilly +never felt the need of advice from any one. He goes his own sweet way." +</P> + +<P> +"That is just it!" she said. "You set yourself so far above him. You +have such a contempt for his pleasures and so thoroughly despise the +company he keeps. Suppose he has a taste for liquor. He is still a +gentleman, I believe. But you, with your solemn rectitude and your +touch-me-not self-righteousness—you would drive him to the very people +and places he ought to keep away from!" +</P> + +<P> +He stared at her. "I have never regarded my repugnance to his habits +as inducing him to further excesses," he said slowly. "Nor have I set +myself up as preacher. Perhaps I have never understood him as—you do. +I only know that his ways are not my ways. He has had every advantage +that education and environment can confer. He is older than I was when +I began practice. But what is he making of his life? He thinks of +nothing but playing fast and loose at country-houses and loafing at the +club and acting the fop and the fool generally!" +</P> + +<P> +Her shaking hand was plucking at the lace at her throat. His every +word had been a live coal laid to her resentment. "Is that the worst +you can say of him?" she asked. "Can't you call him sot or black-leg?" +</P> + +<P> +"Not yet." He was feeling now a dull anger at her scorn, at her +persistent disapproval. The throb of sympathy he had first felt had +been frozen by her icy reproach. "There are other things I wish to be +able to say of my son. I want him to be more than a decorative +philanderer. I want him to be a man—one to whom men may look for +manliness, and women for honour!" +</P> + +<P> +She had grown pale to the lips. "'And women for honour!'" she +repeated. "As <I>I</I> looked to—<I>you</I>!" +</P> + +<P> +He had flung out his arm with a characteristic gesture, but at her last +words it suddenly stiffened and remained, as if it had been frozen in +the air. Slowly it dropped at his side as he stared at her with ashen +face—a look of shocked and disconcerted inquiry. For the exclamation, +as at the swift slash of a blade, had torn away a veil, woven of time +and habit, that covered an old wound. For twenty years by tacit +consent this hidden thing of the past had never been acknowledged by +any word or deed between them. Now a single sentence had laid it bare, +quick and quivering and mutually confessed. They had been married +twenty-two years, and if in that early period he had discerned any lack +in her, he had given her no reproaches. On her part, she had fulfilled +what she esteemed her whole duty, and in her own mind stood blameless. +And he had had his profession. But in the end starved nature had +reasserted itself. There had come to him a passion, swift and terrible +while it lasted, to which he had surrendered wholly—till death swept +it from him. The gall and wormwood had been sweetened then by the +birth, in merciful coincidence with that loss, of his twin children. +He had thought the episode buried forever from sight and hearing, but a +later chance had discovered it to his wife, and in her own +immaculateness she had been able neither to forget nor to forgive. It +had made no difference in her life before their world. Cold and +perfect and correct, she had held her way, but from the day when she +had faced him with his secret in her hand, their hearts had been +strangers to one another. He had climbed high and she had risen with +him. And in twenty years no word had fallen from her lips to open that +old tomb—till to-night when the heavy doors swung ajar at the echo of +that one exclamation. +</P> + +<P> +"As <I>I</I> looked to—<I>you</I>!" There it was—the old ghost, called up to +haunt his present as it had waylaid his past. His hand fumbled for the +discarded eye-shade and adjusted it as he slowly said: +</P> + +<P> +"I have never counted myself a pattern, Charlotte—least of all for my +own son." +</P> + +<P> +She caught the note of pain and weariness now in his voice, and +something new and unaccustomed stirred for one brief moment in her +heart. She had struck harder than she had intended. But she had lost +control at a critical moment and old bitterness, that had never been +tinctured with the sweetness of charity and forgiveness, had sharpened +her tongue. Now his shocked white face smote her with a sense of +self-reproach whose very strangeness threw her momentarily off her +poise. For a fleeting second words trembled on her tongue that might +have dissolved the icy barrier between them. But the golden second +passed. +</P> + +<P> +"That is generous," she said with a distant laugh. +</P> + +<P> +"No doubt Chilly will profit by experience, if not by precept. Shall +you be at court to-morrow?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," he answered. "I have a hearing." +</P> + +<P> +"You will prefer the horses, then," she said, turning to the door. "I +will take the electric for my shopping. Good night." +</P> + +<P> +He opened the door for her. "Good night," he said. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap06"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER VI +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +THE JUDGE SITS IN THE LAMPLIGHT +</H4> + +<P> +In the silence of the room the Judge stood for a moment with his hand +at his lips, as though he tasted blood. The summer night outside was +very still. The curtain before one of the windows swayed gently in the +air and from the acacia trees on the lawn he could hear the sleepy +twitter of an oriole. He turned off the light and went into the hall. +There at one side stood the white, panelled door of his wife's room. +It was shut. It came to him that it stood for a perfect symbol of that +cold immaculateness of hers which had so long denied him the living +bread of sympathy. She could forgive anything in her son, but nothing +in her husband. For twenty long years they two might have dwelt at +opposite ends of the Milky Way, and it seemed to him suddenly +monstrous, whatever the cause, whosesoever the fault, that they, being +man and wife, should yet be so far apart. +</P> + +<P> +He went slowly down the stair again, his hand, shaking a little, +slipping along the polished banister. The dim night-light made the +lower hall a place of ghostly shadows. He re-entered the library, +moved to the table and turned on the reading-lamp. Then, lifting it to +the limit of its silken cord, he threw the electric glow upon the +canvas that hung above the mantel, studying it intently. +</P> + +<P> +"Mine!" he muttered, with a sort of fierce satisfaction. "Mine, every +inch—mine, not Charlotte's! My blood gave you that curve of brow and +those full lips and that deep, dark blue of eye—they are of my side, +not of hers! You, at least belong to me!" +</P> + +<P> +He returned the lamp to its place, and turning, cast his glance at the +little Italian desk in the corner. His lips trembled. At that desk +she had sat—the woman knowledge of whom had sharpened the sword of his +wife's never-dying disdain. The woman who had come into his life too +late! He thought of their meetings, few enough, indeed. How often he +had wondered how life would have turned for him, if at the end she had +listened to his desperate pleading, and gone with him along that +alluring way that had drawn him like an opal path among Italian +asphodels, flinging to the winds social standing, reputation, career, +friends, honour, all! If she had said "yes" to that wild letter he had +sent her—the one to which she had vouchsafed no reply—which might +have been written in his very heart's blood! +</P> + +<P> +He looked again at the painted portrait of Echo, in her splendid youth +and clean heritage: the answer was there. +</P> + +<P> +He sat down before the little desk, stretched his arms upon it and +bowed his head upon them. "You were right, Eleanor," he sighed. "You +were right. But somehow it's been so long!" +</P> + +<P> +He felt a fluttering touch upon his hair and started up. There before +him on the desk lay a faded leaf of paper—a page closely written over +in twirly, dim writing. He lifted it up and held it to the light, his +nostrils catching a scent wraith-frail and delicate, like a dead +pansy's ghost— +</P> + +<BR> + +<P CLASS="letter"> +No—no—no! Why did you write it? Why did you put it into words? For +now I must keep it always. I cannot destroy it. You <I>knew</I> I would +not—<I>could</I> not—-let you do what you beg me to! Never, never! I am +not so mad. Nor are you, really. It is not your best self speaking in +this letter. Sometime— +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +His gaze became fixed. He gave a hoarse cry—a mist was before his +eyes. He snatched at the top of the yellowed sheet—it was dated +twenty years before, and the hand-writing, how familiar! He laid the +leaf flat in the lamp-light and read it through, with every nerve +throbbing to a memory that had started afresh, as instinct as though +days, not years, had sifted their dust upon it: +</P> + +<BR> + +<P CLASS="letter"> +Sometime you will thank me—will think of this only as a ghastly +indiscretion from which you were caught away in time. We do not make +the world we live in, and it is a thousand times stronger than we are. +No, if we play the game we must stick to the rules. To think of +overstepping that boundary, in such a desperate fashion, gives my +fastidious sense a strange recoil—something like that curious shame +and confusion that associates itself with a dream in which one finds +one's-self scantily clad in the midst of wondering strangers! No—no! +I do not think I shall send this letter—but perhaps I may at the end. +For I am going away. I sail to-morrow. Shall I see you +again—ever—ever? What will you think— +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +That was all. It broke off abruptly as though the writer had laid it +aside, never to be finished. +</P> + +<P> +In the silent library the Judge looked at that mute witness as at one +risen from the dead. Twenty years of absence and silence—twenty years +out of his ken, save to the thriving memory! For how long the hand +that had penned those lines had been dust, yet the poor symbols of ink +and paper persisted to confront him now! How had the sheet come to be +on that desk that she had bequeathed him? It had not lain there a +moment before. +</P> + +<P> +He brought the lamp and examined the desk attentively, pulling out +every tiny drawer, sounding each carved partition, twisting and tugging +at every projecting portion of the ornamentation. With a thin, metal +paper-knife he explored each warp and crevice. But his search was +fruitless. If the leaf had slipped from some crack—loosened, perhaps, +by the fall of the brass bowl upon it that day—the old desk kept its +secret. +</P> + +<P> +A strange feeling stole over him, the feeling of mystery that comes to +one with some sudden apposition of incident that thrills with a sense +of an overpowering meaning in a circumstance in itself banal and +trivial. Something of her proud and passionate spirit she had etched +into those lines. Might it be that spirit, somewhere in the great +void, reached out to him through this silent witness—to say that love +does not wholly die? +</P> + +<P> +He gently spoke her name. "Eleanor! You forgave me for writing—that. +If you hadn't you wouldn't have left me this desk when you—died, away +over there in Florence! So I've got your letter at last." +</P> + +<P> +He sighed again and groping for his big chair, sat down, with the sheet +of paper spread out upon his knee. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +On the upper floor Mrs. Allen tapped lightly on Chilly's door and when +there was no answer, opened it softly and entered. At the whisper of +his name he started up in bed. +</P> + +<P> +"Duchess!" he exclaimed. +</P> + +<P> +The pet name, as always, touched her. It was a perennial tribute to +that stateliness and dignity which she had made her own. She came and +sat down on the edge of the bed and he caught her hand and held it to +his lips. "You shouldn't have come," he chided. "You'll take cold." +</P> + +<P> +"I heard your father talking to you," she whispered. "You—you know +what he dislikes so. Why can you not be—discreet?" +</P> + +<P> +Chilly moved uneasily: "Oh, I know," he said. "But I can't always be +giving an imitation of a quaker meeting! I'm not a child." +</P> + +<P> +"You must not anger him," she said. "I—for my sake, I wish you would +be more careful." +</P> + +<P> +He patted her hand. "All right, Duchess! I'll mind my p's and q's. +But you must go back to bed now. Don't you worry about me." +</P> + +<P> +She bent down and kissed him on the forehead before she glided from the +room. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap07"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER VII +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +ARROWS OF DESIRE +</H4> + +<P> +"Here is the new rose," said Echo. "Its name is the Laurant Carle." +</P> + +<P> +Cameron Craig looked—at her, not at the blossom. She was in simple +white and as she stood there in the perfumed garden, vivid, elemental, +tuned to the wonder and passion of living, her slim figure outlined +against the dark green shrubbery and her face and gold-bronze hair +touched with the slanting sunlight, she seemed herself some great, +rare, golden flower in a silver sheath. Lines he had somewhere read +sprang into his mind: +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +"Bring me my bow of burning gold,<BR> +Bring me my arrows of desire,"<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +and, contained man that he was, he caught his breath at the sudden leap +in him of the thing that had been covered and hidden there so long, +something fine and keen as flame, that set his habitually cool blood +beating under his eyelids. +</P> + +<P> +"It was not the rose," he said. "I had another reason in asking you to +come here." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes?" Her voice was evenly inquiring. +</P> + +<P> +"It was to ask you if you will marry me." +</P> + +<P> +She took a quick step backward; a look of amaze had sprung to her face. +"I?" she exclaimed. "You want me to—<I>marry</I> you?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes. Is there anything strange in that?" +</P> + +<P> +She looked away. In all her thoughts of the man before her there had +not lurked this possibility. She had been bred among youth who, +whatever their other vices, maintained a chivalric ideal of womankind +which excluded fast-and-loose conduct; and the whispers that clung +about Cameron Craig—set, as they were, over against his force and +undeniably brilliant attainments—had lent her opinion of him a certain +cold contempt. And now here he was—he of all men!—saying this to +her! And it was no hasty impulse: she read that in the steady, +confident eyes, the hard, heavy jaw, the steadfast, deep-lined face. +</P> + +<P> +She felt his waiting gaze. "No," she answered, slowly. "Perhaps it is +not strange. It is only that the unexpected seems so." She looked at +him curiously. "Why did you ask me—to-day?" +</P> + +<P> +"The opportunity came," he said. "It must have, sooner or later." +</P> + +<P> +"So you have intended for some time to say this to me?" +</P> + +<P> +"Since I first met you, a year ago," he answered. "You have two things +that I want—as I have their complements." +</P> + +<P> +She considered this a moment. "Forgive me," she said then, "but I am a +very curious person—as well, it seems, as a very blind one. Would you +mind telling me what are those two qualities that you imagine I +possess, which you value so highly?" +</P> + +<P> +"Breeding, first," he replied, "and all that it implies. You represent +a stock." +</P> + +<P> +She nodded gravely. "And the other desideratum?" +</P> + +<P> +"Beauty. You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen." +</P> + +<P> +"And—the complements of these things, that you possess?" +</P> + +<P> +"Money," he answered. "And the power it gives—the accessories which a +woman like you must have if she would really live. I think you don't +doubt that my wife shall have these things." +</P> + +<P> +She shook her head. "Not in the least. Indeed, I am sure she will. +But you see, Mr. Craig, I happen to be not at all the sort of person +you think I am—the kind you wish to marry." +</P> + +<P> +"I'll risk that!" he flung her. +</P> + +<P> +"The proof is that you ask me—as you have. The things you have to +offer seem overwhelmingly attractive to you, no doubt, but I'm afraid +they mean much less to me." He could not see the look that was in her +face now, for her head was turned away. "I have no longing for money. +I could be contented in a mountain lean-to, with morning-glories +instead of an orchid conservatory. I could cook my own meals on a +gas-stove and live in one room over a hardware store—with the man I +loved. I don't care particularly for what you call 'place' either. I +could be happy enough on a prairie—with the man I loved. But love +must be there, Mr. Craig." +</P> + +<P> +"Do you doubt my love for you?" he asked. +</P> + +<P> +"You had not cited it," she rejoined, calmly. "You spoke of money +first—" +</P> + +<P> +"Because I have lived long enough to know that it is the paramount +requisite in most women's eyes." +</P> + +<P> +"Your estimate of me by the mass was flattering," she said with gentle +satire. "Have you been so busy making this wonderful money of yours +that you think it can take the place of everything?" +</P> + +<P> +He made an abrupt, almost angered, gesture. "Surely you know money +means—has meant—nothing to me!" he exclaimed. "I am rich, yes. I +dare say I could buy and sell almost any one you know. But it was +never the main thing. It was <I>winning</I> that counted. It was the game, +and money was only the counters. I played to win and I have won. And +wealth was a stepping-stone to other things." +</P> + +<P> +His voice had subtly altered and he drew closer to her where she stood, +moveless and straight against the dark foliage, her gaze averted. +"Then—I met you! I have known many women, but they have been nothing, +less than nothing, to me! Business has been the only thing that really +counted. But since I met you, the whole world has been changing for +me. Even my work isn't the main thing to me any more. The main thing +is <I>you</I>!" +</P> + +<P> +She lifted her eyes, wide with the swift sense of the +unexpected—touched now with an odd, disquieting prescience. His voice +was no longer the cold, even voice of the Cameron Craig she had known. +There was passion in it. She saw his big hand tremble. +</P> + +<P> +"There has never been a day or hour since then when I have not wanted +you! You have entered into my blood and my brain, and the want of you +has coloured all I have thought and done! If this is love, then I love +you—Echo, Echo!" +</P> + +<P> +She shrank perceptibly at the name on his lips. "Stop!" she said. +"The love you talk of must be mutual. I do not—care for you in that +way. I never could!" +</P> + +<P> +"That makes no difference to me!" he protested. "I know what I want—I +always have. And I want you." +</P> + +<P> +"No," she said. "It is not the real <I>me</I> that you want, but we can +pass that by. The important fact is that you have offered your last +price and the bid is declined." +</P> + +<P> +He looked at her with a sudden flash in his eyes. "Do I deserve that?" +He had grown pale to the lips. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, you do. I have told you that I should never love you. Yet that +means less than nothing to you. You have apparently not considered my +possible love as a requisite in the case. It is 'breeding' you want, +and beauty—and for that you make your offer. You propose purchase, +not exchange, Mr. Craig. Well, I am not for sale!" +</P> + +<P> +He flushed to his hair a dark, heavy red. He appeared to be +controlling himself by a fierce effort. "Don't answer me now," he +said. "Let me speak to you again later." +</P> + +<P> +"I have answered you," she replied, "once and for all. You will please +consider it final." +</P> + +<A NAME="img-062"></A> +<CENTER> +<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-062.jpg" ALT=""I have answered you," she replied, "once and for all. You will please consider it final"" BORDER="2"> +<H4 CLASS="h4center"> +"I have answered you," she replied, "once and for all. You will please consider it final" +</H4> +</CENTER> + +<P> +A whirl of what seemed almost rage shook him; with a single stride he +reached her and seized both her hands. "Is there—another man?" There +was what startled her now in the harsh, hard voice. +</P> + +<P> +She stiffened. "Well," she said, "—and if there is?" +</P> + +<P> +At the chill quiet of her voice all the vicious strength and +intolerance of the man blazed out. "You are right!" he said savagely. +"It could make no difference to me! I will not take your answer—do +you understand? In time you will give me a different one. I have +waited for other things and I have had them in the end. I can wait for +you!" +</P> + +<P> +He released her hands—so violently that she fell back a step. Then, +while she stood regarding him in shocked and indignant amaze, summoning +all her forces to meet this fury that had both astonished and repelled +her, his face swiftly changed. The flush of anger ebbed, the flash +died in his eyes. +</P> + +<P> +Once again his accustomed self, with the steady, confident eyes and +swing of shoulder, he drew aside to let her pass and followed her along +the box-bordered path to the piazza. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +As they entered the blue-parlour, a lady very smart in black-and-white, +and a sailor-hat whose girlish brim youthened her mature beauty, rose +from her seat with Mrs. Allen and Nancy Langham, Echo's house-guest, a +slight, glowing girl of nineteen, with eyes like marigolds in shade. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, Echo," she said, "I thought you never <I>would</I> appear. I just +ran in to remind you that you and Nancy promised to come to my dinner +to-night at the 'Farm.' I've asked some of the youngsters out for a +little dance afterward." She smiled a brilliant recognition to the +heavy figure behind her. +</P> + +<P> +"Mr. Craig!" she exclaimed. "So you are in town! How nice it would be +of you to come too. Or do you find country-club gaieties too stale and +unprofitable?" +</P> + +<P> +He bowed over her hand. "My dear Mrs. Spottiswoode!" he said. "This +is my lucky day! I shall be more than delighted!" +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap08"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER VIII +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +THE THRUST +</H4> + +<P> +The "Farm," as the Country-Club was popularly known to its habitués, +was a long, three-storied structure of red brick on the selvedge of the +southern suburb, set in a grove of maple trees facing a lake whose +still depths were stirred by budding water-lilies, like the breasts of +young girls. With its golf-links, and tennis-courts and its ball-room +which formed an L at one side, its white, balustraded verandahs, it was +the favoured resort of both the frivolous and athletic; its monthly +dances were the gayest of the season's informal functions and on +Saturday evenings its row of little dining-rooms, that looked out on a +gentle slope of shrubbery and gravelled walks pricked out with paper +lanterns, were favourite resorts for small dinner-parties. +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Spottiswoode's dinners were apt to have a pleasurable sprinkling +of youth and sobriety and to-night the dozen of the younger set found +sufficient foil in the fashionable rector of St. Andrews in clerical +dress relieved only by the tiny amethyst cross that swung upon his +waistcoat—in Senator Peyton, party-whip at Washington and one of the +state's distinguished citizens, with piercing sword-grey eyes under +brows as black as midnight—and finally in Cameron Craig. +</P> + +<P> +As Echo Allen had said to her father, the latter was not "one of them." +The phrase to her had been an instinctive expression of that subtle +sense of caste that had been born in her, springing from long lines of +gentle ancestors that linked back beyond the days of the Old Dominion. +But the distinction lay deep in the mental formula of the man: it was +not to be perceived in externals. To-night, in his faultless +evening-dress, with his keen, strong face and assured manner, he had an +air even of distinction that well became him, and the instant's painful +embarrassment that Echo felt as her hand touched his in their first +greeting yielded quickly to an unwilling admiration of his poise and +control. If that flare of passion in the garden had left its traces, +they had been successfully covered. He was once more the Cameron Craig +she had known—till yesterday. +</P> + +<P> +But beneath that unruffled exterior Craig's every pulse was in tumult. +At table he found himself opposite Echo. The decorations were red +roses and in a ruby gown with a single rose in the coil of her tawny +hair, she seemed to him an inherent part of the scheme, a ruby pendent +to the rich, shimmering setting. There had been many women to whom he +had been passingly attracted—his tastes had been catholic enough in +that regard! But he had never seen one whom he had wished to marry. +He had spoken truly when he said that the women he had known had really +meant nothing to him. His licenses had been but incidents after all. +They had not ministered to the mental side of his nature, whereas this +passion had taken swift and complete possession. As he saw her now, +her cheeks flushing to the glow of the candles and her eyes like softly +lighted sapphires, he felt open wide within him an abyss that thronged +thick with distempered imaginings. There was another man! She had not +denied it. And with the thought there grew in him a slow, cold hatred +and determination. +</P> + +<P> +Yet his face, as Echo glanced across the roses, betrayed no sign of +disquiet. He was apparently listening amusedly to the small-talk of +his partner, Nancy Langham, in a gown of pale gauze that made her look +like a small, eager tiger-lily caught in a hampering cloud. In the +interstices of conversation Echo could catch whiffs of her laughing +nonsense: +</P> + +<P> +"Isn't Dr. Custis quite <I>wickedly</I> handsome for a rector! I've been +instructed <I>not</I> to ask him if he is related to Martha Washington. The +man across from Mrs. Spottiswoode is Richard Brent, he is 'The Herald,' +and a power in the community, I believe. Our hostess is wearing the +new wave; it costs a lot, but they say it's guaranteed to last six +months. And to think," she sighed, "that Melissa, my maid, spends a +dollar a week trying to have her wool ironed <I>straight</I>! The man with +the goatee, who looks so Spanishy, is Mr. Horace Leighton, the New York +artist who is doing the mural paintings for the new City Hall here." +</P> + +<P> +"So there isn't any one here who isn't anybody!" Craig observed. +</P> + +<P> +"Only me," she said. "The reason I'm asked is because I'm frivolous. +I'm supposed to offset the feast of reason with bubbles and froth." +</P> + +<P> +"At any rate," remarked the senator, "seriousness is not to fall in +arrears. Down at the other end they have actually got to politics." +</P> + +<P> +Echo's glance followed his. Their hostess was holding a glass of wine +between her eye and the candle-light, which splashed a bright crimson +ray on her pretty face. It was the rector who was speaking: +</P> + +<P> +"As for myself, I'm afraid I'm a friend to all the old, hackneyed +arguments. 'If meat maketh my brother to offend,' you know." He +pointed to his wine-glass, which, with the arrival of the soup, he had +turned upside-down. "You see I am consistent." +</P> + +<P> +"Politics?" queried Echo. "It seems to be only teetotalism." +</P> + +<P> +"Ah," the senator answered, "but it's coming to be the same thing +nowadays." +</P> + +<P> +"One understands the individual objection on moral grounds," said Mrs. +Spottiswoode. "That's a matter of personal belief and conscience. And +the Church must be above criticism—must take the sterner course. But +for those of us who don't think it wrong, the other arguments seem +so—so local. I suppose drinking does keep the negroes from doing as +much work as they might, but it's hard on the rest of us to have to cut +our cloth by the farmer's pattern! We here, for example, at this +table, are to go without our sauterne because he has trouble in getting +in his tobacco." +</P> + +<P> +"Exactly," agreed the churchman. "The greatest good of the greatest +number. And isn't that true democracy, after all? But of course the +agricultural problem is the least of it—there are the figures of +poverty and crime. The two are twin-brothers, of course. And drink is +the father of them both. Will, character, determination—a man with +these may overcome the habit. But these are just the qualities that +men in the mass lack. When a weak man falls our system keeps him down. +I once heard Thomas Malcolm—every one here knows of him and his work, +I presume—say that for the average drunkard to reform with a saloon on +every corner is about as easy as to hoist one's-self out of hell by +one's boot-straps. I'm inclined to think he is right. And I never saw +a drunkard yet—a real Simon-pure drunkard, I mean; not a mere +sophomoric tippler—who wouldn't jump at the chance to reform if he +could. But he has no more chance of winning out now than a gambler +against loaded dice." He paused, with a little gesture. "But then," +he added, "the modern political movement for prohibition has made every +one familiar with the basic arguments." +</P> + +<P> +Treadwell, spruce young corporation attorney and cotillon leader, +looked up interestedly from the other end of the table; the hostess's +fan had begun to flutter—a sign of agitation. For Cameron Craig's +affiliations with the great Trust were well-known, though presumably +not to the clergyman, who had met him for the first time that evening. +Craig, however, seemed quite unconscious of personal implications. +</P> + +<P> +"Do you seriously think, sir," he asked, with the faintest trace of +irony, "that the statistics of crime would be materially lowered in +your state if it went 'dry' next year?" +</P> + +<P> +"I do," replied the rector with emphasis. "And not only lowered. They +would be practically wiped out. There wouldn't be enough left to +constitute an item in the appropriation for public printing." +</P> + +<P> +"Naturally, however," Craig observed, "as the state has always been +'wet,' exact data is lacking to assist one's speculations." +</P> + +<P> +"On the contrary," said the other. "Every jail furnishes them. I +think," he went on, turning now to Treadwell, "that it is the +experience of every criminal lawyer that liquor, in some phase or +other, has been back of the larger proportion of cases he is called on +to defend." +</P> + +<P> +The young man nodded. "I never had any experience in criminal cases," +he said, "but I should think you were not far wrong. What do you say, +Brent?" +</P> + +<P> +"I agree with you," the journalist answered, "but my view of course is +a superficial one. It is a pity that Harry Sevier isn't here; we +should have got a valuable opinion." +</P> + +<P> +"You may be gratified then," said the hostess. "Though Mr. Sevier +couldn't come to dinner, he will be here for the dancing." +</P> + +<P> +The senator spoke. "Sevier! I heard him in court yesterday." +</P> + +<P> +"So did I," commented Nancy, aside. "I gave up an auction-bridge for +it, and I wish I hadn't. It wasn't exciting at all." +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Spottiswoode looked relief—at last the talk had shifted to safe +ground. "He lost the case, I hear," she said. "I wonder what was the +matter. Wasn't he in good form?" +</P> + +<P> +The senator looked thoughtful. "In one way, yes," he replied +judicially. "I confess, though, I had rather expected something +different, but just what I scarcely know." +</P> + +<P> +Nancy turned her small, piquant face. "<I>I</I> know. We all expected Mr. +Sevier to do what he has done so often—but didn't to-day. Oh," she +exclaimed almost angrily, "while he was talking along, like a machine, +I could have shaken him!" +</P> + +<P> +"That <I>would</I> have furnished the sensation!" said Treadwell. "And I +should think it might have had its effect on the jury, too. Juries +<I>can</I> be intimidated. I wish you had tried it." +</P> + +<P> +She made a little face at him across the nodding roses, then turned +more earnestly to her partner. "I don't know anything about court +matters or criminal trials, but from where I sat I could see the man he +was defending. He looked so hopeless and—scared! I wanted to stand +up and scream across the room: Can't you <I>see</I>? Look at the poor thing +there! Make the jury <I>feel</I>! You were thinking the same thing too, +Echo, I could see it in your face." +</P> + +<P> +Echo lifted her eyes. In the candle-light her cheek held a rising +flush. She looked across at the rector. "What do you think, Dr. +Custis?" she asked, evenly. +</P> + +<P> +He responded promptly. "Perhaps the explanation isn't so far afield. +I presume the man had confessed to him and Sevier knew he was guilty." +</P> + +<P> +Echo was conscious of a wave of relief at an explanation so simple and +credible. It had never occurred to her to question the accuracy of +other verdicts Harry had won in the past. Each had seemed to her the +triumph of a just cause over a baleful combination of circumstance, the +brilliant freeing of truth and innocence from entangling error and +maleficent scheming. But if this man was guilty and Harry had known it +beyond question, what other outcome had been possible? At the moment +she saw in that even, cold presentation of the court-room only the +conscientious determination of the lawyer, who, as the law prescribed, +stood by his client to demand that justice, if she must exact her +penalty, prove conclusively every jot and tittle of her ground. +</P> + +<P> +Craig's eyes had been regarding her steadily. With the spreading of +that flush upon her cheeks a covert, laughing allusion that had come to +his ear on the court-house steps on the day of the trial darted to his +mind. A cool, keen certainty rushed through him. Sevier! Fool that +he was not to have thought of him before! This young <I>flâneur</I>—and +drunkard!—this petty trifler with his profession! Was that white +indignation of the garden, this vivid flush, for <I>him</I>? He leaned +forward, his heavy voice, intense and well modulated, addressed the +clergyman: +</P> + +<P> +"An interesting hypothesis, but the implication seems hardly safe. A +lawyer's responsibility to his client is a very grave one. He owes +none toward the commonwealth—the state's attorney takes care of that. +Any less conventional view should appeal to a lawyer, I think, as +dangerous and uncalled-for." +</P> + +<P> +"What do you fancy was responsible for Sevier's method of defence in +this case?" asked the rector. +</P> + +<P> +There was an instant of blank silence. The conversation had absorbed +the lesser talk and other voices were hushed. Craig's look was set +upon the long oval damask with its glistening silver and baskets of +brilliant fruit, its leaf thin glasses with languid beads rising in +their liquid amber, its knots of fern and bonbons. His big fingers +were twisting the stem of a goblet. When he spoke it was as though he +had not heard the question. +</P> + +<P> +"I attended a trial once," he said, "at a frontier town in the far +southwest, a border community where procedure is very primitive. The +man was charged with murder. He was a school-master, I believe, and in +a quarrel with some local bully or other, had killed him. I was in the +place on some land-business and went to the trial for mere amusement. +The whole neighbourhood was there. Both men, it appeared, had been in +their cups, and self-defence seemed an adequate plea. Acquittal was +regarded as fairly certain—the more so as the District Attorney was +the bosom-friend of the accused man, and everybody knew it. There was +almost no attempt at evidence, which didn't seem surprising under the +circumstances, and the state made the baldest farce of its +cross-examination. The real interest came after a rather long recess +that preceded the final speeches. The prisoner's counsel was a young +man with a rough, direct address that caught the people. He had them +pretty well with him, too, and when he sat down there seemed very +little reason why the jury should even leave the box. The speech had +been a fairly long one and as it had grown dark, candles had been +brought in and set about—two on the judge's desk and some on the +tables." +</P> + +<P> +Echo repressed a start. It had come to her suddenly that there was a +significance in what he was saying—a suggestion that a quick +clairvoyant sense told her was principally for her. In the few words +he had, with apparent unintention, sketched the actual scene in the +court-room of the day before, and while reversing its elements, was +picturing, in unfamiliar guise, its identical situation. She felt her +face slowly harden, and turned her profile toward him, her hand playing +with a spray of fern beside her plate. +</P> + +<P> +"During the whole speech the District Attorney had sat in his chair, +with his chin in his collar and his eyes closed, never moving. When +his turn came he didn't rise; in fact, it was clear that he had been +asleep. A laugh went round and the sheriff put a hand on his shoulder +and shook him. He got up, looking confused, and while he blinked at +the candles, some one in the audience called out, 'Never mind, old man. +If you can't make a speech, recite a poem.' It was curious, but the +remark seemed to give him a clue, and he began to recite Hood's <I>Eugene +Aram</I>." +</P> + +<P> +Craig paused a moment and sipped from his wine-glass. All at the table +were leaning forward intently. Treadwell was frowning at his plate. +No one spoke; only a fork, dropped from Nancy Langham's fingers, +rattled against the cloth. +</P> + +<P> +"It was a strange sight," went on Craig, "and one I have always +remembered. You must picture the crowded court-room, the gloom, the +flaring candles, and the whole uncanny episode, to realise the effect +that was produced. The man was by nature a marvellous actor—he would +have made his fortune on any stage. At first it seemed as if he didn't +know quite where he was, but then the ballad itself gripped him and he +rendered it, acting each line, as I never heard it before or since. I +had never realised what was in that poem. Very few there, I suppose, +had ever heard it in their lives, and they listened in a fascinated +silence while he rolled it out to the last line. +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +"'Two hard-faced men set out from Lynn,<BR> + Through the rain and heavy mist,<BR> +And Eugene Aram walked between<BR> + With gyves upon his wrist.'"<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +He paused again. "Oh, finish!" gasped Nancy Langham. "I don't like +that story. What then?" +</P> + +<P> +"When he ended he walked out of the court-room without waiting for the +verdict." +</P> + +<P> +Echo's head turned toward him. "They found him guilty!" exclaimed Mrs. +Spottiswode. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes." +</P> + +<P> +"And you say the District Attorney was his best friend?" asked the +artist. +</P> + +<P> +"So I was told." +</P> + +<P> +"And yet wanted to convict him?" +</P> + +<P> +Craig shook his head. "No, I didn't say that." +</P> + +<P> +"Then what," inquired the rector, "do you take it, inspired him to such +an extraordinary action?" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh," said Craig, and as he spoke, for the first time he looked full at +Echo. "It all came out afterward. He didn't realise what he was +doing. He was drunk." +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +For an instant Echo's breath stopped. In the unexpected dénouement she +had guessed, as at a lightning-flash, Craig's real purpose. Sharply, +baldly introduced, the tale stood forth intrusive and malicious, an +implied slur upon a man who was not present to refute it. Her whole +being flooded with fierce resentment, mingled with an angry amaze that +of all there no one else seemed to have caught the insinuation. To the +rest it had been at most a <I>gaucherie</I>, a parallel which, if perhaps +not felicitous, had been without significance and would be readily +forgotten. Therein lay the added sting, that Craig had so accurately +judged the outcome. He had guessed how it stood with her and Harry +Sevier, and counting on her keener sensitiveness where the latter was +concerned, had barbed his shaft for her alone! +</P> + +<P> +The next instant, however, the tension broke with every one talking at +once. From this babble the senator emerged with a negro story about a +trial with "exterminatin' circumstances," which brought a ripple of +laughter, and presently the hostess gave the rising signal. +</P> + +<P> +The room opened upon the ball-room from whose further end already came +the squeak of tuned catgut, and beyond this spread the invitingly cool +verandas, now beginning to fill with filmy gowns that showed pallidly +against the evening dusk, where the bouquet of masculine segars mingled +with the dewed scent of shrubbery. Here in the increasing numbers, +unobserved as she thought, Echo stepped down onto the cool dark turf +and following one of the little meandering bush-bordered paths, came to +a rustic bench over which a paper lantern threw flickering +rose-coloured shadows. On this she sat down, struggling to regain her +lost composure and grateful for the sense of quiet and the cool +inspiration of the water, over whose margin the moonbeams danced in +elfish ecstasy. +</P> + +<P> +In another moment, however, the silence was broken. A step sounded on +the path, and she looked up to see Craig standing before her. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap09"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER IX +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +THE TURN OF THE LONG LANE +</H4> + +<P> +Echo came to her feet, all her blood on fire. In her resentment it had +seemed to her that by very silence she had made herself party to that +slur upon the man she loved, and she had been aching fiercely to repel +it. +</P> + +<P> +Craig tossed his segar away. He made no apologies for having followed +her from the piazza. "May I sit here and talk to you?" he asked. +</P> + +<P> +She remained standing. "Mr. Craig," she said with quiet emphasis, "I +am glad you have come to me here. I have something to ask you which I +could not have asked you—there." +</P> + +<P> +He bowed and stood waiting. +</P> + +<P> +"I fancied," she went on, "in certain of your remarks at the table a +lurking innuendo. It is difficult to reply to such a thing. You would +make it possible if you would put it in a more direct form." +</P> + +<P> +"Your own observation does not appear to err in directness," he +answered, after a pause. "I am afraid I must ask you to descend to +plain English." +</P> + +<P> +"In the course of the dinner you told a story." +</P> + +<P> +"Henceforth I shall congratulate myself on my skill as a <I>raconteur</I>." +His tone was mildly ironic. +</P> + +<P> +"It seemed to me—and I think I am of average intelligence and not more +fanciful than most—that by that story you intended to convey, an +insinuation against the reputation of a gentleman whom I do not care to +hear maligned." +</P> + +<P> +He looked at her with smouldering eyes. He was feeling admiration for +her quick, hot southern blood and resentful spirit. It was part of +that splendid type of womanhood that he had determined to make his own. +And that it was now displayed in defence of the man whose weakness he +despised and whose personality he hated filled him with a dull, +glooming fury. His lips twisted. "Maligned?" he repeated, in an +accent that was a question. +</P> + +<P> +"That was my word," she said steadily. +</P> + +<P> +"You appear to attach an extraordinary importance to my tale," he +retorted, with grim sarcasm. +</P> + +<P> +"Do you deny that there <I>was</I> innuendo?" +</P> + +<P> +He smiled. "I can endure even that suspicion, since it is such a +compliment to my own subtlety. May I ask, in my turn, in whose +interest you so valorously take up the cudgels?" +</P> + +<P> +"Your story directly followed a reference to Mr. Henry Sevier's +handling of a case in court here. The unexpected outcome of the trial +in your tale was due to the fact that its chief character, though no +one realised it, was under the influence of liquor. The implication +seemed obvious—that Mr. Sevier was not himself when he conducted his +defence." +</P> + +<P> +He shrugged his shoulders. "You are the only one who has drawn such a +conclusion?" +</P> + +<P> +Her pale face blazed. "Oh, I understand! You intended the inference +for me alone!" +</P> + +<P> +"Well?" he asked, with aggravating calmness. +</P> + +<P> +"Did you insinuate that, or did you not?" Her pent-up anger was +tearing now at her self-control. +</P> + +<P> +He laughed, a short, jarring laugh. He felt an insane desire to seize +that slender, unyielding body in his great arms, to rain kisses on that +vivid, scornful mouth with its short upper lip, and bend or break her +like a sapling to his savage will. "Suppose I did," he said stonily. +"What then?" +</P> + +<P> +"That was a contemptible act!" The young voice cut like a whip-lash +and involuntarily Craig's big fists clenched. "And if I were Mr. +Sevier, I would horsewhip you!" +</P> + +<P> +A sound from behind them fell across the surcharged quiet. Both turned +astonished faces—Echo's quivering with feeling, Craig's set and +stormy—upon the man whose name had just been spoken. Neither had +heard his step as he came quickly along the grassy path, nor had Sevier +guessed the situation till those pregnant sentences sent the blood from +his heart. He had thought the secret of his failure unsuspected. The +realisation now that one, at least, had guessed the truth had been +instantly swallowed up in the bitter knowledge that it had fallen to +her—the one woman in the world—to defend him, who was undeserving! +</P> + +<P> +Craig regarded him with a veiled smile that was half a sneer. The +apparition had come at a fateful moment. Then his glance passed to +Echo. "May I ask," he said, "whether you have yet cross-examined Mr. +Sevier?" +</P> + +<P> +He bowed and went quickly up the path toward the lighted piazzas. +</P> + +<P> +There ensued a silence in which two minds travelled far. Echo had sat +down upon the bench, her face averted. Her anger had faded out and her +heart was hammering at the thought that Harry had heard, in her defence +of him, what was in truth a confession. Across the aching interval +broke the wanton bubble of a whip-poor-will. +</P> + +<P> +"Echo—" he said in a muffled voice. +</P> + +<P> +She looked up at him in the feathery light. "You heard—I wish you +hadn't. Yet I couldn't help it! That ridiculous slur! But you can't +possibly imagine that—that any one who knows you—" +</P> + +<P> +He stopped her with an abrupt gesture. "Wait. I want to—I must tell +you something." +</P> + +<P> +"No, no!" she protested. "You shall not! I need no assurance. Do you +think that I—" +</P> + +<P> +He shook his head. But for that last sneering look of Craig's, that +satiric challenge, he might have maintained a silence that would have +seemed to her only a proper pride in himself and a deserved contempt +for the whisper of malice. But the look and sneer had flicked him on +the raw, had called to some element of naked honesty deep within him. +In that second he had known, shame-stricken, that whatever the outcome +there could be no evasion between them. There must be the truth. He +was no longer what he had thought himself, but he would be no +malingerer. +</P> + +<P> +"Thank you," he said, "for that! Yet what Craig wished you to +believe—was quite true." +</P> + +<P> +She stared at him unbelievingly. "True!" Her lips formed rather than +spoke the word. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes. I <I>was</I> under the influence of liquor. But for that I should +have won the case, I believe." +</P> + +<P> +"But," she faltered, "I don't—understand. Why, I never saw you +in—that condition in my life! I was there. I—I heard you speak." +</P> + +<P> +"It is not the first time," he said steadily. "Nor the second, nor the +third. Liquor helped me to win my cases. I thought I had made it my +slave when it had made itself my master. This time it failed me. And +I—I failed my client," he added bitterly. +</P> + +<P> +She did not catch the note of pain, of deep contrition in his voice. +Her own hurt was too keen. She only heard the high-built structures of +her own ideals crumbling down about her feet. "So Craig was right!" +she said under her breath. +</P> + +<P> +"Don't think it is easy for me to tell you this," he went on. "It is +because I must. All my life I have cared very little what others +thought. But—you—I care what you think. I never knew how much till +now, when I have thrown your good opinion of me in the dust!" He bent +and took her hands. "Echo, is it the death of your ideal of me?" +</P> + +<P> +Her lingers trembled in his grasp. Pictures were flashing before her +mind—frost-stung October days when they had galloped with the baying +hounds, over the blown, tinted leaves and russet fields—winter +skating-parties on the frozen river, summer dances like that of +to-night, for which the music was now swinging a hundred yards +away—always it had been she and Harry Sevier. He had been so superior +to the blandishments of the smaller vices. Others had failed and +fallen; only he had remained on his pedestal, a type of brilliant +accomplishment. She saw now his success as unenduring, fictitious, his +talents besmirched with the vice that was most hateful to her. "Not +the first time, nor the second, nor the third!" In their own circle +she had seen the dreadful cycle more than once repeated—the slow, +baleful fastening of habit, the struggle, the piteous, ignoble yielding +and the final slipping down to degraded depths from which there could +be no resurrection. There was Chilly, her own twin-brother, with his +feet set on the same primrose path. And now was it to be Harry Sevier? +She shuddered and drew her hand from his clasp. +</P> + +<P> +"I—see," he said, in a slow, even voice. "You can't trust me." It +was not the Sevier that had kissed her hand who spoke now, but one whom +that gesture seemed to have flung an infinite distance from her. +</P> + +<P> +"Can you trust yourself?" she asked. +</P> + +<P> +Harry's tongue touched his lips—as it had done in his inner office on +the day of the trial, when he stood looking at her picture on his desk. +Since that day he had known no breath of the periodic craving. But +now, curiously, he felt his mouth growing all at once arid and dry with +the old slinking thirst. <I>Could</I> he trust himself? The question +seemed to thrust itself at him with a malevolent significance. How +much of his will had he indeed, surrendered? Did he know? +</P> + +<P> +There rose up suddenly in him a savage resolution. Not another drop +upon his lips—never, never! Not for the sake of success, not for his +very life, never so long as he lived! +</P> + +<P> +He took her hands in both his own, leaned down and kissed them. Then, +without a word he went rapidly from her. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap10"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER X +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +AFTER A YEAR +</H4> + +<P> +Lawrence Treadwell, the attorney, sat in his office negligently smoking +a segar and staring down through the open window upon the busy +thoroughfare beneath. Outside was the spring sunshine and the smell of +growing trees. Just across from the building stood the city's new +Opera House, over whose ambitious entrance was still stretched a canvas +sign advertising a mass-meeting held the evening before under the +auspices of the Civic Club. +</P> + +<P> +He read the lettering reflectively as he blew out clouds of the +fragrant, opalescent incense: "Protest Against Machine-Rule." He +smiled. The old revolt of the Quixotic handful against the entrenched +forces that had governed the city for a generation—one more of the +popular ebullitions which punctuate modern progress, the familiar +periodic dust-storms from whose turmoil the Old Guard emerged, moveless +as ever in the saddle, to a new campaign dictated by the mighty +Over-Lord, the great Public Services Corporation which, through its +multiple ramifications, assumed to control the state's franchises, to +dictate its significant legislation—even to influence its judiciary. +As he read the words on the canvas bellying in the breeze, his smile +was cynical. +</P> + +<P> +Yet the smile had a touch of wistfulness too. The movement had grown +out of the general unrest, the keener public conscience, that had +accompanied the political renaissance that in the past year had been +sweeping over a dozen commonwealths. In the old southern city, wherein +principles were not yet become mere hypocrisies and folk still +preserved old-fashioned political ideals, it had attained to the +prestige of well-known names and engaging personalities. Their +forefathers had been men to whom honour and cleanliness in public life +had meant all things and who had governed as naturally as they had +breathed. And there were many among these to whom the new era, with +its open sneer at public trust and its subservience to great +aggregations of wealth selfishly employed, had become an increasing +reproach. The man who gazed down from the office window had long ago +made his choice. He had no illusions. He knew to what allegiance he +owed his present position. It had been the reward of long and faithful +service! Yet sometimes still the bonds chafed—sometimes still the new +spirit that was stirring abroad struck through his ingrained habit, +calling to him to do the impossibly fanatical thing! +</P> + +<P> +There was a knock at the door and a man entered. It was Cameron Craig. +He responded briefly to the lawyer's greeting and coming to the window, +stood a moment beside him, looking down at the hurrying wheeled +traffic, the loitering pavement pedestrians—and the flapping canvas +sign. He laughed a little, but without mirth. +</P> + +<P> +"You were there, I suppose," he said. +</P> + +<P> +Treadwell nodded. "Yes. It's tilting at the windmills, of course." +</P> + +<P> +"They began too late," said Craig grimly. "The ticket is safe enough +this year. But next year—the Gubernatorial campaign—if they only had +fire enough to keep the blaze going till then, they might give us +trouble." +</P> + +<P> +The other did not answer. His eyes had rested briefly on Craig's face, +then again had sought the window. He was thinking that his visitor had +not changed for the better during the past two months. The fact, +indeed, would have been apparent to a casual eye. The virulent force +and will were no less noticeable, but there was now a kind of glaze +over his face—a certain fierce and sullen quality that seemed a +reflection of inner bitterness. +</P> + +<P> +The judicial eye clove to the fact. Since that far-away night at the +"Farm," Craig's passion had never loosened its grip. It was +characteristic of the man that he had on that occasion played the only +card in his hand, not blindly, but by instinct and without hesitation. +But while he had apparently gained his point, it had been borne to him +gradually that his very method of play had lost him infinitely more +than he had gained. In the mind of the woman he desired he had +transgressed the rules of the game, and the realisation maddened him. +Never since then had he heard her name coupled with Harry Sevier's. +Never had he seen them together. This had given him satisfaction. But +if he had shattered her regard for the man whom he now hated more +tenaciously than he had ever hated anything in his whole life, the fact +had seemed to hold no advantage for himself. On several visits to the +city, he had invented reasons to call at the Allen house, but he had +soon learned that he was not to meet Echo there. He had, however, seen +her elsewhere more than once—when her gaze had gone by him as if he +had been empty air. Though his veins burned with the fever of the +famished, he had not ventured to challenge that cold aloofness. But it +had rankled and stung him almost beyond endurance, till he had come to +thirst avidly for some kind of test between them—for action, whatever +the result might mean. And the fierce desire that raged within him, +feeding on itself, had left its sinister traces on his face. +</P> + +<P> +Abruptly Craig withdrew his gaze. "I see young Sevier held forth last +night. The last time I heard him was in court, just a year ago. The +young fop! He'd do better to stick to his lawbooks—though I hear he +has no cases anymore." +</P> + +<P> +"It's his own choice," the attorney answered coldly. He liked Harry +Sevier and he resented the other's tone, no less than the words. "He +could have a new client every day if he wanted. As a matter of fact he +hasn't taken a case since the one you speak of. He fought for six +months trying to get through an appeal on that. It was the first +criminal case he had ever lost and it cut him up some, I fancy. Of +course it's ridiculous to take it so to heart, but I swear I can't help +liking him for it! He's not merely a fop, either. In my opinion he +comes mighty near being just what that crowd at the Civic Club have +been looking for." +</P> + +<P> +Craig's eyes had not left Treadwell's. "In what way?" he asked. +</P> + +<P> +"As a spokesman. They know what they believe and what they want to +fight for. But they've been inarticulate. Most of them are +blue-blooded old fogies, with their souls full of fine ideals, but with +no leader. In him (and in that speech of his last night he threw in +his lot with them absolutely) they have a finely trained legal +mind—for with all his old fire-works Sevier always had that—and a +natural orator besides. You should have heard him last night! For two +hours he held that great audience in a perfect spell. 'The finest +exhibition of southern oratory since the war' the papers called it this +morning, and I tell you, Craig, they weren't far wrong!" +</P> + +<P> +He stopped, somewhat embarrassed by his own enthusiasm, and wondering +at the dark look on the other's face. Perhaps to hide this, Craig +turned away. His fingers were twitching and for an instant he was not +wholly master of himself. When he spoke, however, he had regained his +governance. +</P> + +<P> +"After all, it wasn't the future of this anti-machine campaign that I +came to talk about. There's something nearer home that is worrying me." +</P> + +<P> +"What's the trouble?" +</P> + +<P> +"The Welles-Scott case decision. It is to be handed down on the first +of May. It must be in our favour." +</P> + +<P> +The other looked surprised. "But surely it will be." +</P> + +<P> +"It's not on the cards. I thought I knew the Judge, but there are +signs that I'm afraid of." +</P> + +<P> +The attorney sniffed incredulously. "Judge Allen!" he exclaimed. +"Why, the trust made him. And it keeps him made, I should think, too." +</P> + +<P> +Craig shook his head. "He's been talking lately. We've had warnings +from some who are very close to him. This decision <I>must</I> be what we +want it to be. Voters are thinking more than they used to. If these +Civic Club people keep up the agitation—particularly if they link on +to the prohibition movement, as they are likely to do—the distillery +may become a live issue in the next state campaign. That's the great +danger. And this Welles-Scott case strikes at the heart of the matter. +If the Trust loses this decision it will be the signal for a crop of +bills in the next legislature that will cost us a cool million to +fight. And they may lead anywhere. I tell you we <I>have</I> to have it!" +</P> + +<P> +The other mused a moment. "The Judge, of course, can't be reached +in—in ordinary ways." +</P> + +<P> +"Of course not. He's not venal. We've been able to depend on him so +long because he has grown up with the Trust—he was its counsel for +many years—and its interests were his. He thought with it. His mind +ran in the same groove. But Beverly Allen, the Trust's counsel, and +Judge Allen of the Supreme Court are different propositions. I always +thought this test case was a mistake! But I was overruled. Well, +we've got to have the decision. If one way won't bring it about, +another shall. Something will have to—persuade him. He must have a +weak spot. We must find it, that's all." +</P> + +<P> +"His life's been an open book, if that's what you mean," said the +attorney, slowly. +</P> + +<P> +"Few men's life are open books," returned Craig, with cynical +shortness. "There's apt to be a page pasted down somewhere. That part +of it is your business. If there's any such page in his case, you find +it! I don't care how small a page it is, or how long ago it was pasted +down. If it's there I want it!" +</P> + +<P> +"His record was combed with a fine-tooth comb when he went on the +bench," said Treadwell. "The Trust wanted a man that the opposition +couldn't get anything on. That was before your time, of course. I +went over the report myself. There wasn't anything there—nothing but +the vaguest suspicion of an old love affair that was polished off +twenty years ago." +</P> + +<P> +Craig turned sharply. "A love affair! After his marriage?" +</P> + +<P> +"Why yes, I think so. But there weren't any details. And the woman +died abroad long ago." +</P> + +<P> +"What was her name?" +</P> + +<P> +Treadwell looked at him curiously. A faint flush had crept over his +face. "See here, Craig," he said, "after all, there's a limit to +decency. At the most it was nothing but a passing infatuation—an +innocent one. There was not the faintest breath of scandal. And as I +told you, the woman is dead." +</P> + +<P> +Craig's eyes were boring into him. "Treadwell," he said in a hard +voice, "you don't seem to understand. This is a big game, and there is +no limit! None! And I intend to win it! <I>What was her name?</I>" +</P> + +<P> +The other leaned to knock the ash from his segar. There was a tense +pause before he replied. "I have forgotten." +</P> + +<P> +"Where are the old reports?" +</P> + +<P> +"They were destroyed." +</P> + +<P> +Craig looked at him an instant, his eyes like sparkling points of +steel. He opened his lips to speak, but he did not. Instead, with a +shrug of incredulous contempt, he caught up his hat, turned to the +door, opened it and went out. +</P> + +<P> +Treadwell listened to the heavy footsteps descending the stair. Then +he went and shut the door. +</P> + +<P> +"The hound!" he said under his breath. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap11"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XI +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +CRAIG FINDS HIS WEAPON +</H4> + +<P> +From his chair in the library at Midfields that night, just beyond the +circle of radiance cast by the big reading-lamp, Cameron Craig looked +steadily at the Judge from under his bushy eyebrows, as the latter said: +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, it is true that I was for years affiliated with the interests you +represent. I was their attorney. The connection ceased when I, +myself, severed it, eleven years ago." +</P> + +<P> +Craig's lips, that had been set in a hard line, parted in a satiric +smile. He was leading doggedly up to what he purposed to say. "To its +profound loss," he said from the shadow. "You had cogent reasons, no +doubt." +</P> + +<P> +The other mused a moment, his pallid, scholarly face averted. "I'll +tell you, if you like," he said at length. "But you will understand +that I challenge no one else's convictions. I assume to sit in +judgment only upon my own." +</P> + +<P> +Craig nodded. "Of course." +</P> + +<P> +"I made the connection we are speaking of," continued the Judge, "when +I was a young man, just beginning practice. The liquor problem was +young then too. Communities did not take it too +seriously—particularly in the south where drinking was a matter of +course with gentlemen. The white-ribbon movement was in its infancy +and John B. Gough had hardly been heard of. To me—to the men I +knew—the 'temperance' agitation seemed a mere recurring fad, fostered +by pious and well-meaning persons, which cropped up—a kind of moral +seven-year locust—at periodic intervals. People lived more or less as +their grandfathers had lived before them on their plantations. And +their fathers had been fox-hunting, hard-living 'three-bottle men' +right down to the war. I had all the habits and prejudices of my +class. Liquor seemed to me like many another thing that was made to +minister to individual weakness, but was not in itself obnoxious. And +the decanter was never empty on my side-board. Yet even then the new +element in politics and in every-day life—the sentiment against +liquor—was growing. Times were slowly changing, men's outlook was +changing, and I knew—long before I admitted it to myself—that I was a +part of an industry which the best thought of the community no longer +approved, and that men who championed it were swimming against a +deepening and strengthening social current. I was stubborn, but at +last there came a day when I—changed too." +</P> + +<P> +His voice had softened, had suddenly become surcharged with feeling. +He leaned over the table and caught up a small oval photograph, set in +a black-leathern frame. It was a picture of his son Chisholm, as a boy +of perhaps fourteen. He held it out in a hand that slightly trembled: +</P> + +<P> +"That is why I changed, Craig. One night Chilly came home—drunk. I +had never seen him intoxicated, had never guessed that he could so far +forget himself. He was a mere boy, at school! In that moment the +sharp truth came to me. Shame stared at me from my own door-step. I +saw the text of the sermon that had been preached into my deaf ears—in +my own son!" +</P> + +<P> +He broke off abruptly and set the picture back on the table. When he +spoke again his voice was more even: +</P> + +<P> +"That hour, as I sat here in this same room, I—saw. Could anything +else have opened my eyes? Perhaps not. But that did. I saw all at +once what I had been bolstering. It was no longer a theoretical +question of the harm of the club-bar and the corner saloon to the +community. They were making a drunkard of <I>Chilly</I>! The Trust +furnished their stock-in-trade. And I had been the Trust's paid +tool—a part of its brain in this state—had guarded it from error, +shown how far it could go with impunity under the law, had even made +possible its organisation as it exists to-day! I, Chilly's father! +That night I wrote out my resignation as counsel. I mailed it before I +slept." +</P> + +<P> +There was a slight pause. Craig's lowering look had been watching the +other curiously. The emotion in the older man's voice had touched no +chord of response in him. Rather it roused contempt—not for the son, +whom he considered a brainless weakling, but for what seemed to him an +arrant attempt to evade the issue that stood so sharply and insistently +in his own mind. To him no man's motives were pure. The man before +him had been not the Trust's servant, but its creature. Had not the +Corporation, behind all, set him on his high seat? Was he fool enough +to think that he—Craig—was not aware of that? It had expected him to +pay in kind, when the need arose, as now it had. And did the other +think to throw dust in his eyes with such mawkish sentimentalism—to +evade this old tacit obligation by a flimsy pretence of moral scruple? +Craig spoke: +</P> + +<P> +"And—the Corporation. What did it say? Eh?" +</P> + +<P> +"The president of the board came to see me. He was good enough to ask +me to reconsider. But I had made my choice." +</P> + +<P> +Craig leaned forward, his arm on the little inlaid desk beside him. +"Let me finish," he said with deliberate meaning. "The board, +accepting that decision with the keenest regret, desired to make your +retirement the occasion for showing in a tangible way its appreciation +of your long and faithful service. A seat on the Supreme Bench being +vacant, the Directorate proposed, unless your taste pointed otherwise, +to use such influence as it might possess, to gain for your name the +consideration in that connection which it deserved." +</P> + +<P> +A look of surprise had crossed the Judge's face as he began. A +sensitive flush swept it as he ended. "If you imply that my seat was +offered me, Mr. Craig, even tentatively, at that time, or in that +connection, you are in error!" +</P> + +<P> +Craig's sneer was open now. There was no more pretence. "If not in so +many words, in effect! Pshaw! Do you mean to pretend you would have +had that appointment if the Trust hadn't backed you for it? It owned +the state bag and baggage then, as it does now—and as it will continue +to do! It put you on the Bench and it has kept you there, and you know +it!" +</P> + +<P> +The Judge was on his feet now, his flush faded to pallor. He deigned +no answer to the flung assertion. "What is your object in coming to me +to say this?" His voice was deep and resonant. +</P> + +<P> +"Just this!" Craig lifted his arm, his big fist clenched, his eyes +narrowed. "You were the Trust's counsel and confident for twenty +years—till it put you where you are now! Do you think it did that for +nothing? It <I>made</I> you, Beverly Allen! And now it has reason to +believe that you intend to knife it in the back—to drag the ermine it +put on your shoulders into an incendiary hue-and-cry started by +demagogues who aim to destroy a great industry!" +</P> + +<P> +"What do you mean, sir?" The Judge's tone was icy. +</P> + +<P> +"I mean the Welles-Scott decision!" Craig said in a low, deadly voice. +"That"—his clenched hand smote the light desk at his elbow with a +savage blow—"must be <I>ours</I>!" +</P> + +<P> +For an instant there was blank silence. The Judge stood aghast, his +very speech frozen with indignation. To him his judicial calling had +an element that was almost sacred. This man—to whom he had given the +hand of friendship, who had the <I>entrée</I> into the exclusive circles of +southern gentility—this man assumed to lay coarse fingers upon his +vestment of office, to question his integrity as a Judge! He dared to +believe him, Beverly Allen, cheaply venal—a puppet, whose legal +rulings were at the beck and call of corporate influence! The room +seemed suddenly stifling hot. He turned to the window, flung the +curtains wide and drew a gulping breath of the fresh air. +</P> + +<P> +He had not seen Craig's sudden start. For at the smashing blow of his +fist on the fragile Italian desk, a curious thing had happened. Its +catch loosened by the jar, a tiny carven panel had fallen with a little +click, and a thin sheaf of yellowed letters had dropped and spread +fan-wise beside his hand. The backs of the envelopes were uppermost, +and across the top one was written in a dim, twirly hand and faded ink, +the initials <I>B.A.</I> +</P> + +<P> +A thought darted like cold lightning through Craig's brain. +"B.A."—Beverly Allen! Whose were those old letters? The initials +were in a woman's hand. What if they held a clue to the old story +Treadwell, his attorney, had spoken of? A quick instinct inspired him. +His hand closed over them quickly—went to his breast—as the Judge +turned from the window. +</P> + +<P> +The latter had regained self-control. He stood erect and tall, his +leonine head thrown back, his eyes shining, and in his face a look the +other had never seen in it before. "You have presumed," he said, "to +say to me what I would not have believed any representative of your +corporation would dare to say. And you have taken advantage of my +hospitality to say it in my own house. I choose now to believe this +message an individual one, springing from a personal and base +initiative rather than from the responsible Directorate which I once +served. 'Once,' I say. For I serve it no longer. I am now a member +of the Judiciary of this commonwealth. Because the corporation +furthered my candidacy, you assume that it 'made' me. Perhaps it did. +But it never owned my conscience or my integrity! Nor does it now, +thank God!" +</P> + +<P> +As he spoke he had stepped to the wall and pushed a bell. "Nelson," he +said, to the entering butler, "show this gentleman to the door." +</P> + +<P> +Craig had risen to his feet. He looked at the other an instant with +livid face. Then he went rapidly to the hall and snatched up his hat +and stick. The outer door closed heavily behind him. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +In his room at the hotel Cameron Craig took the sheaf of letters. +Under the electric-light he drew the folded leaves one by one from +their worn envelopes and spread them open before him. A look of +chagrin crossed his face. No woman had written them; they had been +penned by the Judge himself—he was familiar with the heavy, +characteristic hand-writing. Were they, then, only some old letters to +his wife, perhaps? He was holding one leaf to the light. Suddenly his +eye caught. He made an exclamation. His face lighted with amaze and +savage exultation. +</P> + +<P> +What a weapon blind luck, ironic fate, had put into his hands, in the +very face of the man for whom he had craved it! For on that leaf, +etched in remorseless ink, was what would open an old grave, drag into +the daylight the corpse of an ignoble passion, cast scorn upon the +writer's name and blight and wither present and future! How little, +after all, the tricks of the body changed! Twenty years—and yet, <I>his +letter</I>! +</P> + +<P> +What matter when it had been penned, or whether the woman were long +dead to whom he had once written that blazing indiscretion? He, the +jurist of spotless living and good repute—to be shown forth to the +world as a moral fraud, a husband and father who had once stood +shamelessly ready to fling home and reputation on the scrap-heap in a +disgraceful flight "without benefit of clergy!" The woman presumably +had scorned his offer—since she had sent him back his letters—and yet +on the page still stood the black intention, in black and white! What +incredible folly had led him to preserve it? Twenty years ago—in the +dead past—and yet there it was, to be used in the living present, the +blunt handwriting, recognisable at a glance, damning and beyond denial! +</P> + +<P> +He laughed aloud. It was Echo's father whom he held in his hand! If +he did not come to terms, so much the better, since the blow would +strike her too. She thought herself above him, did she? What if this +story should be spread abroad in yellow headlines, babbled of in club +and boudoir, smirked at on street-corners? Would she hold herself so +high then? Well, if he was so far beneath her pride, that should bring +her to his level! He felt no prick of shame at the base move he +contemplated, no smart of pity for the ruin it should bring. Ambition +in which was no tincture of honourable scruple wove, with the desire to +humble the woman who would have none of him, to a resolution as +unyielding as steel. +</P> + +<P> +He gathered up the letters and put them carefully into his pocket. In +another hour he was on the train, speeding to his home in the next +state. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap12"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XII +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +A HOSTAGE TO THE BOTTLE +</H4> + +<P> +The speech of the day before of which Treadwell had spoken so +enthusiastically to Cameron Craig, had indeed given to the crowd, which +had been wont on past occasions to gather at the old court-house when +he spoke, another revelation of Harry Sevier. It had been +impromptu—not the outgrowth of deliberate plan. The non-appearance of +a much-heralded speaker had thrust the exigency upon him without +warning, and he had acquiesced only in a keen desire to save from blank +failure a meeting in whose principles and object he was by his very +character deeply interested. The tortuous involutions of local +politics had never interested him, but he had thrilled to the stirring +beneath the surface of the great forces of good and evil and the +present agitation for clean government had found him enrolled, without +question, on its side. +</P> + +<P> +As he stepped forward to face the great curtain of faces that stretched +outward and upward beyond the footlights, he had not known what he +should say. Indeed, while he slowly "felt" his audience in his opening +sentences, the sub-conscious part of his mind had been full of a matter +foreign to the subject at hand. There had come to him a fleeting +recollection of the last time he had spoken in public—the day upon +which he had betrayed his client and put a man, of whose innocence an +instinct deeper-rooted than reason had convinced him, into the striped +habiliments of the convict. The sharp, aching compunction of that +thought had never left him. Since that day, though he went daily to +his sumptuous office, he had taken no new case. He had gone always +with that sin clanking against his conscience and the memory of the +trial had focused always in that glimpse, across the mass of faces, of +a woman's look of puzzle and hurt. During the months since then that +face had hung before his fevered vision as a far, cool oasis to the +desert wayfarer. These had been black months of fierce, untiring +battle with the appetite to which he had surrendered himself, and which +he had sworn to conquer. There had been times when the avid thirst had +seized him by the throat, when endurance had almost failed: days when +he had sat in his inner office, with door locked and blinds down, +fighting desperately with the strenuous impulse that seemed to be +dragging him bodily, as if with fleshly hands, to the little +wall-cabinet whose door had never been unlocked since the day of that +sinister court-recess. +</P> + +<P> +During this prolonged, grappling struggle he had never been to +Midfields. He had seen Echo but occasionally, walking or driving on +the street, or less frequently at functions from which he could not +absent himself without remark. There had been no confidences between +them. Never had he leaned to her to whisper: "You see! Do I do well?" +Never had her lips said, "I know ... I know, and I am watching!" yet +his heart had told him that she was alive to the issue, that she felt +the forces conflicting for the mastery. She had not been in the +audience on this day, but as the faces pulsed and receded till they +wove into a grey blur in the misty blaze of the incandescents, Harry's +inner vision had a swift memory of her face as it had looked in that +old court-house scene. +</P> + +<P> +And with it, as though it had been a key to the disused mental +machinery, strangely and wonderfully there had come back to him, in a +sudden flashing illumination like summer lightning, a surging return of +the old power, the vivid rush of lambent images in his brain and the +burning, insistent phrase to his tongue—the power that he had thought +gone forever with that shuddering failure of a year before. +</P> + +<P> +As he felt again the old native ability rising in him, strong and +undismayed, and once more his own, without hostage given to the bottle, +a stinging delight had swept through him. It was the fruit of victory, +and fiercely sweet in proportion to the bitterness of the struggle. +Yet in his new sensitiveness the realisation had held a flicker of +self-shame. Never in those old days had he employed that talent for +the greater good: only for individual ambition, often for the blunt +defeating of the clear ends of justice! It was another Harry Sevier +who spoke now, one to whom conscience now stood as mentor, to whom +principle was become a guiding star. The leashed power and restraint +had been bred of that long struggle, and from the fresh mastery of self +which he had so hardly gained, flowed forth a subtle magnetic quality +that held his listeners mute. In the hush that wrapped the great +assemblage the speaker of the day, late by an hour, had entered the +back of the stage, to wave back the nonplussed chairman and to seat +himself in the rear, enthralled by the white magic that swayed all +alike. The speech had held no rodomontade, none of the pyrotechnics +that, had lent a flavour of sensation to past court trials. It had +been on a higher plane than appeal to superficial feeling or ingrained +prejudice. It had brought no accusation, pointed no finger, save +backward to old ideals of community respect, and forward to the wave of +independent thought that was sweeping over sister states to break in +thundering force upon the crags of misrule. +</P> + +<P> +It had closed in a note of hope and of promise, and ended with the hall +hushed in that greatest tribute to true oratory—absolute silence. +</P> + +<P> +Next day, wherever men congregated in the little capital, Harry +Sevier's name was on every lip. It was flung wide, too, in newspaper +headlines until the ripple stirred far borders. Of this he himself +could not be unaware. He knew that never in the old days had he spoken +as he had spoken then. He was conscious also that in the trial of +himself his faculties had been reorganised and renewed, had emerged +sounder and truer from the strenuous testing, and that the fire through +which he had passed had burned away the rubble and left metal that was +more worthy. Nor could he fail to realise that at a single step he had +attained to a new and unfamiliar status in the community. He felt this +not so much in the multiple congratulations of the many, as in a +certain new deference that he distinguished in more reserved greetings. +</P> + +<P> +Beneath all, however, but one opinion profoundly concerned him—Echo's. +As he swung along the street this afternoon, the thought of her +excluded all others. +</P> + +<P> +Rounding the corner, a voice came to him—a ribald, good-humoured +voice, inviting some one to "come and have a drink." He turned +abruptly. Chisholm Allen stood a little way from him, before a +swing-door through which sifted the clink of glasses and boisterous +conversation. +</P> + +<P> +Chilly was decidedly the worse for wear. Much water had run under the +bridges since he had tussled with old Nelson, the butler, over the +decanter of sherry. His face was pallid and the marks of incorrigible +weakness and self-indulgence showed clearly through its habitual +good-nature. Chilly's feet were set in the paths of dalliance and he +had ceased to care if anybody knew it. He greeted the newcomer, +however, with a trace of embarrassment which he dissipated with a +laugh, as he said: +</P> + +<P> +"The invitation's for you, if you like, Harry. We'll have one to the +silver-tongued orator! What do you say?" +</P> + +<P> +For answer Harry linked an arm in his and turned him down the +street—away from the swing-door. "Come up to my rooms, Chilly, it's +cool there and we haven't had a talk for a blue moon. No, we'll +consider the drink afterward." +</P> + +<P> +Just at the moment a carriage and pair bowled by them. It was drawn by +the Allens' bays and Echo was on the rear seat. She had seen the +action, had caught its import, and Harry had a flashing glance from her +dark eyes that sent the blood coursing to his fingers. Chilly too, +however, had seen the swift exchange. He frowned, then laughed again. +</P> + +<P> +"You should join the Salvation Army," he said, satirically. "They've a +rescue corps, I believe. I know a pretty ensign, and she shall come +and pin a nice little medal on your manly chest!" +</P> + +<P> +Harry smiled without resentment. "The Army might not be so bad; it's +an outdoor life at any rate. You'd be better for more of that." +</P> + +<P> +"I believe you," said Chilly lugubriously. "It's getting impossible +indoors. Nothing doing but moral lectures nowadays. If it weren't for +the Duchess I'd cut it." +</P> + +<P> +"For 'somewhere east of Suez, where a man can raise a thirst'?" quoted +the other mildly. "Travel is expensive, Chilly." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, confound it," was the reply. "So is the thirst. The old man +only allows me fifty dollars a month and I've stuck up every bar in +town to the limit." +</P> + +<P> +A frown was on Harry's brow. A year ago this youth had confined his +daily potations to the club, and his drinking-bouts to that sequestered +resort, "The Springs." Now he drank openly in corner saloons—he, the +son of a southern gentleman, a member of the Supreme Bench, whose +forebears had been courtly and clean-living from the days of the +Colony! They had turned into the apartment-building now, and a moment +later were in Harry's sitting-room, whose windows opened upon a square +musical with lisping leaves and the cool splash of a fountain. +</P> + +<P> +It was an apartment that bespoke a keen though sober artistic taste: +grey walls with violet silk curtains at the deep windows and two or +three old paintings—among these, set on an easel, a Greuze that he had +unearthed in a cobwebbed curio-shop in Italy—a plain desk with a strip +of dull-coloured damask whose quaint Russian needle-work set off a few +books in tooled leather—a square piano of Circassian walnut spread +with an old brocade, against which a bowl of peonies splashed their +fleshy crimson—and deep, comfortable chairs. Into one of these Chilly +threw himself. +</P> + +<P> +"Well," he said, "here we are, as per schedule. So trot out your +drink." +</P> + +<P> +"It was that I wanted to talk to you about. I think you know I'm your +friend, Chilly, and what I say I say as a friend. Whisky is getting +the better of you." +</P> + +<P> +"Pshaw!" scoffed Chilly, easily. "You weren't always so mighty +particular. When did you climb onto the water-wagon, I'd like to know?" +</P> + +<P> +"When I found I was better off there. I haven't touched liquor for a +year. Take my advice, Chilly—it's sound!—and try to cut the drink +out. It's doing you harm." +</P> + +<P> +Chilly laughed. "That seems to be the signal all along the line!" he +said humorously. "But what's the good? I could knock off any time I +chose, just as well as you. But I don't intend to do it yet awhile. I +like it." +</P> + +<P> +There was a tentative knock at the door. It opened and a girl's +piquant face peered in. "Chisholm Allen!" said Nancy Langham's +indignant voice. "Have you forgotten you have an engagement to take me +to the kennels this afternoon?" +</P> + +<P> +Chilly sprang forward and seized her small gloved hands. "Come in," he +said. "There's nobody here but Harry and me. Please do, Nancy." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I mustn't!" She turned to the latter. "You see I needed Chilly +so <I>tremendously</I>, and Echo told me she saw him with you. I expected +to meet him on the way. Then I thought I'd just ring and ask for him, +only the hall door was open. Chilly, you're outrageously undependable. +You know I wanted to get that dog to-day, because I'm going to leave +for home to-morrow, and you do know more about dogs than any one else." +</P> + +<P> +Chilly looked a little shame-faced. "I forgot all about it, Nancy. +Honestly, I did." +</P> + +<P> +She sighed. "That's the fact, no doubt, but it's not one bit +complimentary. You're so dreadfully truthful, Chilly! Come along now, +or we'll be too late." +</P> + +<P> +"All right," he answered, drawing her inside the door. "Just a minute. +Harry's going to give me a drink. Weren't you, Harry, eh?" +</P> + +<P> +For answer the other pressed a button and a trim silk-robed Japanese +came noiselessly from the next room. "Fetch a bottle of Evien, +Suzuki," he said, "and some glasses. Have it cold, please." +</P> + +<P> +Chilly stared. "Mineral water!" he exclaimed with sulky discomfiture. +"My word! This is no signal for the H2O. I'm <I>dry</I>!" +</P> + +<P> +Harry shook his head. "I'm sorry, but it's a rule of my house." +</P> + +<P> +Chilly shrugged. For an instant a little sneer drew down his lips, +irritation fighting with his seldom-failing good-humour. He turned to +the square piano, sat down on its stool, and ran his fingers up and +down the ivory keys. +</P> + +<P> +"I'll return good for evil," he said. "Before we go I'll give you a +little ballad I've just composed. It's bound to make a great hit when +it strikes the Barbary Coast. He struck a resounding chord, and with a +wink at Harry, began to sing: +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +"The rounder swore at his barroom score<BR> + 'Ere he called for a last, long bottle,<BR> +And proceeded to tint, without any stint,<BR> + His nose with a mellow mottle.<BR> +Then he climbed on a chair and hiccoughed long<BR> + And loudly he sang this funny old song:<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + "'Money is dross,<BR> + Loving is loss,<BR> +There's never a crown that is worth its cross!<BR> + Life is a toss,<BR> + Dying is moss,<BR> +But booze—Oh, bully old booze, is boss!'"<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +There was something of whimsical fun, yet of bitter recklessness in the +spectacle. Without technical training, Chilly had music in his +finger-tips and a fair baritone voice. The fingers wavered now and +then and the voice was shaken a little, but it was full of magnetism, +as, swaying lightly on the stool, he rolled out the slangy doggerel +with all the unction of a music-hall artist: +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +"Then the mixer laughed till the cat went daft<BR> + And the roof clanged all its gutters,<BR> +While the loungers yelled with mirth unquelled<BR> + Till they shook the very shutters;<BR> +And a sweet-faced devil peeped over the steins<BR> + And merrily carolled the lilting lines:<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + "'Money is dross,<BR> + Loving is loss,<BR> +There's never a crown that is worth its cross.<BR> + Life is a toss,<BR> + Dying is moss,<BR> +But booze—Oh, bully old booze, is boss!"<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Harry's nerves were on edge. It was not the cheap vulgarity of the +jingle nor the patent swagger of the performer, but the +under-suggestion of the picture. The edge of this qualm had touched +him on the street, with the odour of Chilly's breath and the moist tang +of hops that had floated through the swinging-door. Now he felt a +sudden anger that the coarse picturing and the tinkling keys had power +to call up, even for an instant, the old slinking, craving ache in his +throat. +</P> + +<P> +Chilly swung round and got up laughing. "Pretty good, eh, what?" he +said. "Come along, Nancy; we'll go and pick out that dog! So long, +Harry." +</P> + +<P> +Harry opened the door for them. He did not trust himself to speak. As +Nancy's hand lay an instant in his on the threshold, a wave of sudden +pity engulfed him. Her cheeks were mist-pale and her girlish lips were +trembling. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap13"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XIII +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +THE HEART OF A MAN +</H4> + +<P> +An hour later Harry sat in the same pleasant room, looking out where +curdled clouds set their silver sails in the pale shimmer of sky. A +light breeze fluttered the figured-silk curtains, a blue-bottle buzzed +tentatively to and fro outside, and birds were fluting in the trees of +the small park and splashing joyously in the fountain. +</P> + +<P> +The encounter with Chilly had broken into his mood, which had been +occupied with more inviting things. Now, alone, the thought of what +this day held for him absorbed him. "One year!" he had said to himself +on the day of that old court-house trial. "That is the test I will +give myself. It is enough. If I can beat the brandy for a year, I can +beat it forever!" To-day was an anniversary; this afternoon the year +was up. The period had called up all his courage, had searched out +with prying fingers every crevice of weakness, explored insistently +each avenue of uncontrol. But he had won the long battle, and the +resurgence of the old power that had come to him in his yesterday's +speech had crowned the victory with confidence. Yesterday he would +have died sooner than to have wrung from his lips what he should say to +her—to Echo—to-day! +</P> + +<P> +When the tall old clock in the corner next chimed he rose and called, +"Suzuki!" +</P> + +<P> +The Japanese servant of spotless raiment entered with noiseless +footsteps. +</P> + +<P> +"Tell Aunt Judy I sha'n't want dinner to-night," said Sevier; "I'll +dine at the club. You can take the night off, if you like; I'll let +myself in." +</P> + +<P> +"<I>Hai-e!</I>" Suzuki sucked in his breath and his oval eyes allowed +themselves a gleam of satisfaction. As he brought his master's hat and +stick Harry looked at him meditatively, wondering, as he had wondered a +thousand times, what lay behind that secret-keeping, brown face with +its perpetual, half-smiling gravity. He had picked him up a half-dozen +years before in his travels, a shabby and abject adventurer with an +English dialect that was fearfully and wonderfully made; and the +youthful flotsam had speedily and without apparent tuition blossomed +forth into that inestimable jewel, a perfect valet. With Aunt Judy the +cook, who had been a servant of his father's, Bob the chauffeur who was +her son, and Suzuki, Harry's bachelor <I>ménage</I> in the city stood a +model of its kind, and the despair of his associates. +</P> + +<P> +Harry walked slowly along the street clanging with cars, on pavements +busy and sunny at first and giving place gradually to wedges of lawn +and stretches of deserted foliaged flagging as he approached the +suburbs. At the big gate of Midfields he lifted his eyes. Mrs. Allen +was just stepping from her electric at the curb, cool and statuesque +and smiling. +</P> + +<P> +"A penny for your thoughts!" she said. "I really believe you were +counting the flag-stones. I hope you were coming in—you've been +shamefully oblivious of our pleasure this season!" +</P> + +<P> +"I've been oblivious of my own," he countered, opening the gate for +her. "But I'm going to make amends in future." +</P> + +<P> +They walked leisurely up the drive under the acacias, chatting. She +had often wondered, in the old days, whether there were not some +understanding between him and Echo, and his long absence had puzzled +her. But he had apparently gone nowhere else, and she welcomed his +return. He was a distinctly eligible <I>parti</I>, and Echo had reached a +point where the future was a pertinent thing. There had never been +between the mother and daughter that close <I>rapport</I> which existed +between daughter and father; Mrs. Allen had never felt that she +understood Echo. She had never known for her, even as a child, the +fierce and excluding yearning which she had lavished on Chisholm, and +which had grown even stronger with the latter's increasing years and +delinquencies. But she had Echo's interests thoroughly at heart, and +Harry Sevier—particularly since his speech at the Opera House—had +attained to importance in her worldly estimation. +</P> + +<P> +"I haven't congratulated you," she said presently. "Your speech! It +was a masterly thing." +</P> + +<P> +"You were there? I'm glad I didn't know it. It would have deepened +the blueness of my funk." +</P> + +<P> +"Flatterer!" She tapped him on the arm with her parasol. "But I'm not +wholly pleased, I assure you. The headlines are prophetic, I'm afraid. +Presently the politicians will seize upon you, and the first we know +you will be in Congress—or the Senate—and the town will have lost +you. That's the way it goes!" +</P> + +<P> +"Ah," he said, shaking his head, "who is the flatterer now?" +</P> + +<P> +They had reached the big porch and she drew him into the hall and to +the blue parlour, where the Judge sat with Echo, leisurely munching +toast. "I've brought Mr. Sevier," she announced, "with his laurels +thick upon him, just in time for tea. For my part, I am a wreck from +the sun and I shall take mine in my room. But you'll come soon again, +won't you?" +</P> + +<P> +She passed out, faintly smiling and leaving a perfume of heliotrope +behind her, without waiting Harry's answer, which seemed indeed to be +given to Echo, since his hand held hers at the moment and his eyes were +on her face. The sight for him had blotted everything else. The +restful room with its cool shadows, the Judge—all seemed to retire +into an inextinguishable and meaningless background, leaving only them +two, together. In the year past he had never been so near her; now he +marked that while her hair had the same familiar whorl and golden +under-lights, her face seemed more serious than of old, her eyes deeper +and more wistful. +</P> + +<P> +Since that far-away evening at the Country Club, Echo had passed +through a confusion of experiences, the more trying as they had been +locked in her own breast. It had been more than Harry Sevier: it was +her love for him that had been fought over during that long year. When +he had left her that night with his kiss burning on her hand, she had +known instinctively that he had gone to do battle. What she had said +had stung him deeply, yet she could not have recalled a word. It had +been the cry of wounded pride, of stricken ideals, of reproach, of +protest against the dominancy of the thing she hated over the man she +loved. As the long months of autumn and winter wore away she had +seemed, with a singular clarity of vision, to see his temptation and to +enter spiritually into his struggle. They had met only a few times and +then in public places and more than once her eye had distinguished the +traces of the conflict. Something deep in her had told her that when +he came to her again that conflict would be ended. So, at sight of him +on the threshold, Echo's heart had leaped into turbulent beating. +Here, at last, they were face to face—it was the closure of the past, +the burgeoning of the new! +</P> + +<P> +There was a desultory conversation over the tea, and then the Judge +went back to his chair in the library, and they two strayed out through +the open French-window to the wide porch. There, on the top step, she +sat down, leaning back against one of the big columns, up which a +crimson rambler climbed. He sat lower, at her feet. The smile had +faded from both their faces, and a rose that was on her breast, from +the tumult of her heart, showered its petals on the stone. He could +see the old sun-dial gleaming from its tangle of ivy. He knew its +quaint motto: +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +<I>Hours fly, flowers die.<BR> +New men, new ways,<BR> + Pass by;<BR> + Love stays.</I><BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +After a silence he lifted his gaze. +</P> + +<P> +"You didn't think," he said in a low voice, "that I stayed away because +I—because that same thing had ever happened since the day of the +trial?" +</P> + +<P> +"No," she answered, gently, "I knew it hadn't." +</P> + +<P> +A uniformed imp on a bicycle—a postal messenger—careened wildly up +the drive with a special delivery letter. They saw him deliver it to +old Nelson at the side portico and pedal whistling down a by-path. +</P> + +<P> +"Then," he said quickly, "you know now that it never can again? It has +been a year, a round year to-day. I made up my mind that I would not +come to you till the last day was out." +</P> + +<P> +"I felt that, too," she said. "I knew what you were thinking. I—I +even guessed the year. Was it—so hard?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," he answered. "But it would have been harder if I hadn't found +it out when I did. The sting of all these months," he went on, "has +been your thought of me! Every day, every hour, I have seen you as you +looked that night at the 'Farm.' I shall never deserve that look +again—Echo!" +</P> + +<P> +She turned toward him at that, as if with a sudden impulse, her eyes +like sapphire stars, her lips parted, but she did not speak. The +failing sunlight spattered down through the moving foliage in +green-gilt flashes that tinged her face and touched her hair with the +soft burnish of Venetian gold, like that of a figure he remembered in +St. Mark's. Behind her reared the seamed and grey old column—a faded +background of age for a figure of immortal youth—and he knew suddenly +that the picture of her, as he saw her at that moment, had covered +forever the painful memory. There was only the ardent, unconditional +now: only Echo and the dear old porch and the dimming daylight—and a +bluebird singing from the heart of a tree—ever henceforward to be +symbols to him of woman's love and—home! +</P> + +<P> +He leaned toward her, his hand groping for hers, outstretched on the +cool stone beside her, and said in a voice shaken, in spite of himself: +</P> + +<P> +"Echo—it <I>is</I> just as it was a year ago, isn't it?" +</P> + +<P> +She caught her hand—the one he groped for—to her cheek. She rose, +and for an instant it seemed as if she had not heard. Then her glance +wavered and fell and a bright, rich colour stained her cheeks like a +sudden flush of rosy sun-set. But she had slightly turned away and he +did not see it. +</P> + +<P> +"Ah!" he said, looking up at her. "I may say it now—may I not?—what +you must have known all along. I love you, I love you! Only you and +your love, dear—that is all I ask of God!... Echo—" +</P> + +<P> +There was a sudden sound behind them, a hoarse cry from the room they +had left. Both turned sharply toward the French-window. Then she was +down the long porch like a flying shadow. +</P> + +<P> +He followed, to find her bending over the form of her father, slipped +sideways on the leathern sofa, his face bluish-white and a paper +crumpled in his rigid hand. At the same moment Nelson thrust his +woolly head through the rear door. +</P> + +<P> +"Quick!" she cried, kneeling beside the couch. "He has fainted. Call +mother." He went, his aged features twitching with fright. +</P> + +<P> +"I will send Doctor Southall," said Harry quickly. He touched her +hand, and with a single backward look at her, hurried out. She heard +his step speeding down the gravel drive. +</P> + +<P> +Echo laid a tremulous hand upon her father's, and at the touch the +tense fingers relaxed and a crumpled brown paper dropped from them. +She snatched it up—was that what had made him faint? She spread it +out: it was a photographic print, unmounted, of the last page of a +letter, in his own handwriting. Across the top was printed, in the +purple, noncommittal lettering of a typewriter, "For possible release +May 3rd." +</P> + +<P> +Then as she gazed, over the agitation of her face grew a shocked +bewilderment that rushed headlong to realisation. She started to her +feet, and a vivid scarlet flooded her pale face from chin to brow, then +slowly ebbed, leaving behind it a frozen anguish. The print fell from +her hand. At the same moment the Judge stirred and opened his eyes. +He saw her standing before him; knowledge slipped back. +</P> + +<P> +"Echo—" +</P> + +<P> +She turned swiftly. He had struggled to a sitting posture—his gaze +fastened on the crumpled paper on the rug. A little spasm crossed his +face. "Reach me that," he said. +</P> + +<P> +She picked it up and laid it in his hand, and he put it into his pocket +with shaking fingers. He passed his hand across his forehead. +"Where's Sevier?" he asked dully. +</P> + +<P> +"He went to send the doctor. We were on the porch and heard you cry +out." +</P> + +<P> +"Ah, yes, I—remember. I tried to call you. I lost track of things +for a minute or two, I reckon, But it's nothing. I've had little +spells like this before. I don't need Southall—send Nelson to tell +him not to come. I'm all right." +</P> + +<P> +Unheeding her protests, he rose and went to his chair, as Mrs. Allen, +with unaccustomed agitation on her face, swept into the room. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap14"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XIV +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +THE HANDWRITING ON THE WALL +</H4> + +<P> +Late that night the Judge sat alone at his desk in the library. There +was a faint pungent odour in the room and at his elbow sat an ash-tray +on which was a little huddle of brown ashes—all that remained of the +photograph whose arrival that afternoon had so disconcerted him. He +sat like a stone image, staring out into the moon-lighted garden, but +really seeing nothing beyond the range of the poisonous ashes at his +side, save a green-and-yellow blur that might have been blent of leaves +and moonshine. +</P> + +<P> +He was looking at the Handwriting on the Wall. +</P> + +<P> +All of his early life had been impeccable, all save that single +lapse—that "brain-storm" which had convulsed the deep and quiet waters +of his nature. It had come and gone with fateful swiftness, and out of +the bitterness of the tragic awakening had grown gradually—as a +spotless lily springs from the silt—a flower of recompense, which, its +roots in the turbid memory, had shed a subtle perfume on his later +life. His steady-going career had been laurelled with place and +honours, and in Echo he had found compensation for the empty and the +missed. And now, after all the years, Fate grinned at him like a +gargoyle from the cloud, holding the thunderbolt to destroy him! +Unless he paid the penalty—with his professional integrity! +</P> + +<P> +The Judge knew all at once that in the Great Economy no act of life was +lost. His had not been. It had only been covered. Somewhere that old +leaf of scribbled paper had lain, inert but potential, waiting the turn +of the wheel to bring it to light. By some satanic twist of +circumstance it had come to the hands of his enemy—Craig was his enemy +now—and in his hands it spelled his own ruin. What weapon was there +to fight with? None. However dastard the act that spread it to the +world, he would stand in the eyes of his fellow-men discredited, +undermined, morally disestablished, stripped and naked of all those +things which were the breath of his life. He thought of his wife—of +Echo. For them humiliation, looks askance. His decision on the +Welles-Scott case was ready, locked in his drawer—lacking only his +signature writ at the bottom—the most vital and far-reaching decision +of any he had rendered. On the first of May it was to be handed down. +He remembered the typewritten line on the photograph: "May 3rd!" On +that day he would be placarded in the public prints! +</P> + +<P> +A hackneyed text flashed through his mind: "Be sure thy sin will find +thee out." He had not sinned, as the world counted it, no. But +chasing the first, a second text etched itself as swiftly: "As a man +thinketh in his heart, so is he." +</P> + +<P> +The coils had woven inextricably, there was no gap in the meshes. +Suppose he did this thing that Craig demanded, rewrote the decision, +perjured himself. Right, by another judgment, would have its way in +the end. The act would save him from shame—would save others as well. +What did it matter? Would not such a solution be best for all +concerned? +</P> + +<P> +"Thou shalt not do evil that good may come!"—it was curious how the +banal, forgotten texts started up, like Jack-in-boxes, from some +boyhood covert of his brain! Not matter? Ah, how much it mattered! +Escape by that road was impossible for him. And there was but one +other road by which he could evade the issue. +</P> + +<P> +He unlocked a desk-drawer and pushed aside its litter of papers. A +small silver-mounted revolver lay there—pointing the one way out. He +picked it up, his fingers shrinking at the chill of the cool metal, +then laid it on the desk. He took a sheet of paper from its place and +began to write: "Dear Echo—" +</P> + +<P> +He started; no, that would not do. He began again: "Dear Charlotte +and—" +</P> + +<P> +He paused an instant and listened—his hearing had caught some sound +above-stairs. It was not repeated and he bent his head again over the +writing. But his fingers would not frame the words. He laid aside the +pen. Better, after all, to go all silently, leaving behind him empty +speculation, which if painful at first, would become in time but a +softened memory! +</P> + +<P> +It was the opening of the door of Echo's room which he had heard. For +hours she had lain sleepless, her brain throbbing, strange painful +pictures flitting under her closed eyelids. Her home world, which had +always seemed simple and uncomplex, even in its darker aspects, had +suddenly become fateful and mysterious, a thing of secret depths and +shaming, piteous revelations. Her own father's past had held a secret +that would not bear the light! That he had loved another woman than +her mother—afterward—that, though the thought was repellent, perhaps +he could not have helped. But that he had ever, ever as a passing +phase, yielded to an infatuation which had taken no thought of +consequence or of convention smote her with a kind of terror. Now, +through his own reckless act, he had become the prey of a shameless +woman—of a blackmailer. +</P> + +<P> +For that was what it seemed to her. It did not occur to her that his +letter might have fallen into other hands. In her imagination, back of +the situation stood the woman who had tempted him, almost to his +complete undoing, in his youth, now—a very wanton!—holding out the +badge of his indiscretion, for a price! The photograph had come to him +with its blunt threat typed at the top: "For Possible Release May 3rd." +Echo had seen the like many a time written upon her father's +printer's-proofs. It meant released for publication. His letter was +to be spread broadcast—unless he met the demand! The hideous +vulgarity of his predicament sent pulsing waves of shame and +humiliation over her. It seemed suddenly that their conventional, +well-ordered existence had dropped all at once into an unnatural and +hateful environment, the murky, unredeemable atmosphere of the +yellow-backed novel and the tawdry film-play. Thoughts such as these +had fought with the acute sympathy that had all her life made her and +her father in feeling wellnigh inseparable, stabbing her love with the +reflection that his deepest heart had, after all, been locked from her. +</P> + +<P> +Gradually, however, the sharper corrosive ache had dulled away, leaving +an overmastering sense of his trouble. Since Nelson had helped him to +his room after his fainting in the library, she had not seen him, for +though he had with curious stubbornness, it had seemed to her, refused +to have the doctor come, he had not appeared at dinner. She wondered +whether he was now asleep, or lying wide-eyed, nursing thoughts like +hers. Finally there had stolen over her an odd uneasiness, a thriving +anxiety. That tenuous telegraphy whose laws evade analysis though its +operations are familiar and which, ever since her childhood, had called +from her a subconscious and involuntary response to his moods that had +sometimes startled them both by its eerie suggestion, now flooded her +mind with a sense of warning. She slipped out of bed to peer through +the blind. She could see a window of the library: light was sifting +from between its heavy curtains—her father was not in his room, then; +he was there. She thrust her feet into worsted slippers, threw a +kimono over her nightgown and ran quickly down the stair. +</P> + +<P> +The light footfall, the whispering rustle, did not reach the Judge. He +was unaware of the girl who had paused uncertainly on the threshold. +His mind was arguing the final phase of his problem. +</P> + +<P> +What he purposed would cut the Gordian knot, make plain-sailing for +others, if not for himself. He would have rendered no decision on the +crucial case. With his escape the problem would solve itself. Craig +would have nothing to gain then in publishing the letter. "Why not?" +he muttered. "It is justifiable—it is neither gross nor cowardly—to +issue one's-self a ticket into the hereafter in order to avert shame +from the innocent and secure peace to those one loves!" His wife was +provided for. His elimination from her equation of life, he reflected +with a tinge of bitterness, would not deeply disturb her even, centred +existence. Echo, he thought likely, would marry Sevier. And +Chilly—of what earthly use was his life to Chilly? "I will do it," he +said to himself. He stretched out his hand—toward the silver-mounted +revolver. +</P> + +<P> +But he drew it back. A further clearer conception had come to him in +that last instant to give him pause. What, after all, was he about to +do? Himself aside, all that was dearest to him aside, was not the act +he contemplated at bottom the murder of a principle, the betrayal of a +trust that he held for the State? He was a public officer, who had +taken oath in the presence of his associates worthily to execute the +functions of his high office, to do justice and fear not. For him the +sin of omission could be no less than the sin of commission. Would +such a shifty suppression of his decision be one whit less a treason +than the rendering of a mendacious one? Either equally besmirched his +honour! Something deeper in him than dread of death, deeper even than +his present fear of life, stirred and throbbed. No, whatever the +outcome, no matter what it held for him and his, he must go through +with it to the bitter end! He buried his face in his hands. +</P> + +<P> +As he sat thus stirless, the sense came to him of another presence in +the room. Another's breath seemed to enwrap the place with feeling. +He turned his head and saw the figure in the doorway. "Echo!" he cried +and rose to his feet. +</P> + +<A NAME="img-130"></A> +<CENTER> +<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-130.jpg" ALT="He turned his head and saw the figure in the doorway. "Echo!" he cried, and rose to his feet" BORDER="2"> +<H4 CLASS="h4center"> +He turned his head and saw the figure in the doorway. <BR> +"Echo!" he cried, and rose to his feet +</H4> +</CENTER> + +<P> +She came to him quickly, a little diffidently. "I couldn't help it, +dear! I felt you—worrying, and I had to come." Suddenly her eyes +fell on the revolver on the desk. She sprang and snatched at it in +panic. "That! Oh, not that! Not that!" +</P> + +<P> +"I—it was in my drawer," he said. "Surely you—" +</P> + +<P> +"Ah," she cried. "I know! You—you received a letter this afternoon. +It made you faint. You haven't been yourself since you read it. And +now you—" +</P> + +<P> +He drew a shaking hand across his eyes. "No, dear," he said more +steadily. "It would not have been—what you think. There was a moment +when—but it has gone, and forever." He took the revolver from her +hand, returned it to the drawer and locked it. "There," he said, "I +give you the key. It will not happen now." There was in his wailing +speech a kind of hopeless acquiescence and finality. +</P> + +<P> +Her heart was beating hard with a painful embarrassment. "Can +you—can't you tell me what the letter was?" +</P> + +<P> +He looked at her palely, his features working. She would have to know +soon enough, yet he shrank with a fastidious pain from telling her. +What would she think of him? "Twenty years ago," he said, "when I was +a young man, I wrote an—an unwise letter. It—it had to do with some +one who died the year it was written, but whose memory I—I treasure. +The threat is made now to publish it, and this would—would shame and +harm that memory and me." +</P> + +<P> +"Some one who is dead?" she repeated bewildered. The picture her fancy +had painted was fading out. "Then how—" +</P> + +<P> +"The old letter has fallen into unfriendly hands." +</P> + +<P> +"And it must come back to hurt you—to spoil your life now! Something +written before I was born! It sha'n't! It sha'n't!" She spoke with +passionate abandon, her words struck out like fire from flint, from the +horror of the knowledge that had sprung to her at sight of the gleaming +thing at which she had snatched. "But you can pay the price, no matter +how much it is! Take my pearls—my rings—my gowns." +</P> + +<P> +He shook his head. "It's not money: what I am asked to pay is my +honour. I am required to alter my judicial decision on the +Welles-Scott case ... to hand down a legal lie." +</P> + +<P> +She looked at him with parted lips. "The Welles-Scott case!" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes. Much hangs on this decision. The great corporate interests—but +you would not understand." +</P> + +<P> +She threw herself beside his chair and knelt close to him. A great +compassion was welling up in her, mingling itself with deep anger at +the cowardly attack upon him. She had known of such conscienceless +warfare in political life—acts of "character assassins" which knew +neither pity nor honourable scruple. "Who has the letter?" she asked. +</P> + +<P> +"Cameron Craig. It came with his card." +</P> + +<P> +She started violently. Cameron Craig! He who had once asked her to +marry him, who had asserted his love for her—he, now bent on her +father's ruin! She had a darting memory of that heavy, ruthless jaw, +those lowering, determined eyes. Cameron Craig? She lifted a stricken +face. +</P> + +<P> +"You see!" he said. "I remember you once said to me that he was not +'one of us.' He isn't. That is why I know that he will stop at +nothing. He will do what he threatens. There is no way out." +</P> + +<P> +She rose to her feet. Her heart was beating so that her breath came +with difficulty and a mist was before her eyes. "You will hand down +the decision." It was a statement, not a question. +</P> + +<P> +"God help me—I must!" +</P> + +<P> +"When?" +</P> + +<P> +"A week from to-day, as I have announced." +</P> + +<P> +She leaned and put her arm about his neck, the key of the drawer still +clenched in her cold hand, and kissed him on the forehead. Even in +that numb moment she felt a certain pride that he, who had known a +passing weakness, was yet, in this crucial moment, so strong. +</P> + +<P> +"You must go back to bed now," he said, heavily. "You are going to +your aunt's to-morrow, aren't you?" +</P> + +<P> +She nodded, her cheek still against his. "I shall take the early +train, before you are up. But I shall be back next day." +</P> + +<P> +She withdrew her arms. "Good night," she half-whispered, then looked +at the locked drawer. "You will not—you will not—" +</P> + +<P> +"I promise," he said. +</P> + +<P> +"Whatever happens?" +</P> + +<P> +"Whatever happens." +</P> + +<P> +An instant later she was gone. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap15"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XV +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +THE ONLY WAY +</H4> + +<P> +As Echo stood once more in the dim light of her blue-and-white room, it +seemed to her to belong to some blithe past life which she had lived +long ago and discarded—as if she were suddenly an intruder into the +peace and quiet it enfolded. For though her hands were like ice, her +veins were beating hot and her mind was filled with the heat of a fiery +furnace. +</P> + +<P> +Cameron Craig held her father's name, his career, his whole happiness, +and that of them all—her mother, Chilly, herself—in his hand. His +was the power to crush and to ban. This man had professed to love her. +She remembered what he had said to her that day in the garden—a year +ago: "Since I met you the whole world has been changing for me.... You +have entered into my blood and my brain, and the want of you has +coloured all I have thought and done ... Echo, Echo!" The words seemed +to wreathe about her, to return to her in pelted reverberations from +the wall. She could save the situation. She could marry Cameron Craig. +</P> + +<P> +The weird thought had rushed through her like a cold flame with the +voicing of that name in the library. He would do it. More than the +decision, more than any material ambition, he desired her. The +letter—and the photographic plate—should be the price! +</P> + +<P> +As she fought with herself through the long night hours, distraught yet +tearless, it came to her with agonised reiteration that the resolve +marked the end for her of all that makes life young. Up to a year ago +she had been a girl; her deeper emotions had been unstirred, her soul +unknown to herself. Only from the moment at the "Farm" when she had +sent Harry Sevier from her to his battle with appetite, had she known +the real meaning of life. Since then she had had the sweetness of +learning love's unfolding in denial, and that very day it had come to +fruition. Could it have been only that afternoon that the confession +had trembled on his lips, when her heart had seemed to beat audibly, +like little songs of joy? Now the cup was dashed from her lips. And +he would never know—she could never tell him! That was the deep and +piteous treason to which she must contribute! +</P> + +<P> +She crept to the window and looked out over the garden, its elfish +vapours dimly lighted by a thin, silver crescent-moon that seemed +hanging like a gipsy ear-ring from a swarthy cloud. Below her the +box-bordered paths showed in a sunken cross. The hemlock in its +centre, with its triple spires, had been brought, a tiny seedling, by +her great-great-grandmother from White Sulphur Springs, rooted in a +gourd tied on the back of an old buff-coloured coach. The old lady's +quaint portrait hung still in the dining-room, just above the +diamond-leaded cabinet that held the tea-set of gold and lapiz lazuli +blue, from which Jefferson and Randolph had drunk, and her garlanded +silver basket whose inscription read, "From a lover of fifty years to +his bride." +</P> + +<P> +Echo felt a little shiver in her heart, as painful contrasting pictures +thronged before her disordered fancy—pictures of herself as Craig's +wife. She saw herself, young in years but with sere joys and blasted +ideals, all youth's impulses dead in her, the wife of a man whose +bodily presence she loathed and whose character, even before this, she +had detested. A chill passed through her, and she dropped the curtain +and shut out the moonlight. But what if her father stood ruined, the +mark of public pity and covert sneers? She thought of the +pearl-handled revolver. He would have given his life to checkmate +fate, if that had but been possible to him. And she was his daughter! +</P> + +<P> +But to give <I>herself</I>, her body, her soul! To go to this man, to live +with him, to bear his name—she shrank from the thought as at the touch +of white-hot iron. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +When the tiny ormolu clock on her dressing-table struck five she drew +up the blind. Dawn, with its coral sandals, was tiptoeing over the +garden, hanging dew-diamonds on the rose-bushes, swinging her censer of +multifold perfume to the waking flute of the birds. She bathed her +face and smoothed her hair, then put on a dark travelling dress and +packed a small bag, putting into it only linen and a few +toilet-accessories, with a closed silver frame, heart-shaped, whose +twin sides held miniatures of her father and mother. Last she unlocked +a tin box in her drawer, took some money which it contained and put it +in her pocket. Then, bag in hand, she went downstairs. +</P> + +<P> +In the dining-room Nelson held up his hands, pink-lined palms outward. +</P> + +<P> +"Mah Goodness, honey!" he ejaculated. "Reck'n yo' didn' sleep 'tall +las' night, what wid Marse Beve'ly took so yistidy. Yo' look jes' lak +er ghos'. Now yo' set down en drink some hot coffee en eat plenty +chick'n en waffles. Ain' gwine find nuthin' <I>half</I> ez good on dat ar' +dinin'-cyah, nohow!" +</P> + +<P> +The warmth of the coffee was grateful to her, and while the old man +hovered about her she made a pretence of eating, answering his +protestations with monosyllables, in fact scarcely knowing what she +said, for her mind was busy with other things. 'Lige, the driver, +would wait to put her on the train—she must take the up-train then, as +he expected her to do. And it was an express: she could not leave it +till it reached the junction, hours later. There, however, she could +take the other road—the Southern. There must be an afternoon train, +and that, though by a round-about way, would bring her finally to her +destination. +</P> + +<P> +When carriage-wheels sounded from the drive she went into the library +and seated at her father's desk, wrote a note. It was to Harry Sevier. +She sealed and addressed it with a hand that shook a little, and gave +it to Nelson with instructions to send it during the morning. The old +negro put her into the carriage, with her bag and tucked the cover +about her with loving hands. +</P> + +<P> +She caught a breath, uneven like a child's. "You'll—take good care of +father, Nelson?" +</P> + +<P> +"Bress yo' li'l ha'at, ah'm sho' gwine watch Marse Beve'ly lak er +<I>hawk</I>. He'll be all right, en yo' be back termorrer." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," she said faintly. +</P> + +<P> +As the carriage whirled into the roadway, she turned her head to cast a +straining gaze up the silent drive to the old house. Then the acacias +shut it from her view. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap16"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XVI +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +DERELICT +</H4> + +<P> +In Harry Sevier's outer office his clerk glanced backward with a +startled expression, his law-book dropping from his fingers. "That's +queer," he muttered. "I never heard him laugh like that before. +Doesn't sound like a joke, somehow." +</P> + +<P> +He rose and tapped lightly on the inner door, which he had closed upon +his employer a moment before. But there was no response and he went +back to his seat—and the volume he was studying. "Wonder if it was +that note I gave him," he speculated. +</P> + +<P> +The tap had fallen on deaf ears. Harry was sitting in the other room, +rigidly staring at the note in question. There was on him a feeling of +actual physical sickness. He did not know that he had laughed. At +last he rose, and crumpling the written sheet into a ball, laid it in +the fire-place and struck a match. His fingers worked clumsily and he +broke several short off before a flame showed and he stooped painfully +and held the match to its edge. He remained in the crouching posture +while the paper blazed merrily up. In the charring heat it crackled +and opened, showing for a brief instant in the baleful, blackening, +light two sentences it had contained: "<I>Think as gently of me as you +can. I can never marry you—never.</I>" +</P> + +<P> +He stood up dazedly and groped his way to a chair. So this was the +end! She, Echo, whom he had thought so true, she had been playing with +him—and now the game was over. To her he had been only a puppet, a +card in hand to be played off, discarded for the winning of the greater +point. Poor, brainless, fool that he was! There was no longer a +yesterday—no dear eyes holding his, no Eden wind blowing the +rose-petals nor silver stars swinging the incense of the gods! He had +been living in a fairy-tale, a castle in Spain, a fool's paradise, +hugging a ridiculous dream, that had had no reality to her, had been +but a chapter of coquetry, to which she now wrote <I>finis</I>! "Think +gently!" This was the epitaph of her flirtation with Harry +Sevier—flung away, raked under, thrust from sight, a thing for the +scare-crow and the scavenger! +</P> + +<P> +He got up and going slowly to the window, stood many minutes with his +forehead against the pane. +</P> + +<P> +What remained for him? To sweep out of his life the shards of that +beautiful thing that lay destroyed forever? To saunter on, with +hypocritical smirk and affected nonchalance, down the empty declivity +of professional habit, to an undesirable goal? To what end? Of what +value had been his striving? A year ago he might have won her—no one +else had had more than a slight hold upon her then. It had been that +long denial that he had set himself that had undone him! What profit +to him that he had won the mastery over himself, had cut the tentacle +coils that were enwinding him? Of what had been the use? +</P> + +<P> +There darted through his racked mind the sorry jingle that Chilly had +once roared in his rooms: +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + "Money is dross,<BR> + Loving is loss,<BR> +There's never a crown that is worth its cross.<BR> + Life is a toss,<BR> + Dying is moss,<BR> +But booze—Oh, bully old booze, is boss!"<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Why not "cut it all," as Chilly had longed to do? Plunge out along the +numb, reckless way whose well-remembered mile-stones suddenly beckoned +him—anyhow, anywhere, only to muffle the pain that plucked at him—to +sodden and sink himself in blessed oblivion, like a stone in a pool! +</P> + +<P> +A thing that had lain torpid and dormant in the dregs of his being +thrust up its head. It was as though a chain snapped in his brain, and +what had been shackled there reared, savage and exultant. On the desk +sat a photograph in a silver frame. Once he had been used to turn this +face-down when that cabinet was opened a year ago! He picked this up +and with a sudden wrench of his powerful fingers bent and broke it +across again and again, crushing metal and board into a shapeless +battered twist, and flung it into the fireplace. He snatched up a +heavy paper-weight and with one blow smashed in the door of the little +wall-cabinet. The glass fell in a shower of silvery tinkles to the +floor. He seized the black bottle that sat there—with the rusty +goblet—poured the latter to the brim and drank it off—once, twice, +three times. +</P> + +<P> +He went into the main office. Its occupant was on his feet in alarm at +the crash of shattered glass in the next room. "How much money is +there on the premises?" +</P> + +<P> +The clerk looked in a drawer. "About sixty dollars. It's the last +payment on—" +</P> + +<P> +"Give it to me," said Sevier shortly. He pocketed the wad of bills the +other handed him. "I'm going on a journey—abroad," he said. "I may +be gone some time—in fact, I know I shall. Don't forward anything, +and close up the office till I return. You will draw, as usual, of +course." In another moment he was giving directions—over the +complaisant wire—to his bank. He had always kept his leisure clear by +putting the small details of daily routine book-keeping, as he +expressed it "on the other fellow"; however long his desertion, rent +and camp-followers should be paid with regularity. +</P> + +<P> +Ten minutes later his valet, in a suit of spotless white linen, let him +into his apartment. +</P> + +<P> +"I'm off for a vacation, Suzuki," he said. "To-night, when Bob comes +for orders, tell him to put the car up till I want it. You can go to +night-school and rub up your 'Yingleesh.'" +</P> + +<P> +The Japanese blinked. "A'right," he said. "When we see you some more?" +</P> + +<P> +"When I get back." Sevier lifted a book from the table. "Take this to +Mr. Treadwell's—his house, not his office—you understand. There's no +message; it belongs to him. Don't wait; go at once." +</P> + +<P> +When he had closed the outer door on the valet, Harry drew a long +breath. He opened another door and listened. He could hear Aunt Judy +rattling crockery in the kitchen, humming as she laboured. He would be +undisturbed, the coast was clear. His veins were beating hot now with +the brandy, and the sickness was gone. In the old days the reaction +had been slow and grudging. But during the year his body had refreshed +itself. The inured crust of usage was stripped away, and the physical +side responded speedily. +</P> + +<P> +He went into his dressing-room and threw open the huge walnut wardrobe +that effaced one wall. It was hung from end to end with clothing. He +selected a cheap dun-coloured suit which he had purchased abroad years +before for a walking-tour, of whose strenuous occupations it showed +some traces in wear, a flannel shirt and a slouch hat, companion of +sundry long-ago fishing excursions. He took a nail-scissors and +painstakingly cut from each article its maker's name. In the +bath-room, first with shears and then with a razor, he cut off his +crisp dark beard: never, since his college days abroad, had he seen his +own face like that. +</P> + +<P> +Finally arrayed, he regarded himself in the cheval-glass. The Harry +Sevier of sumptuous apparel and perfect grooming, the familiar spirit +of the place, was gone. In his stead there stood an unfamiliar +presence, with smooth-shaven chin and knock-about clothing. And the +stranger looked from the depths of the mirror with a gaze from which +something tempered and remorseful had vanished, a gaze of avid +recklessness and strange, irresponsible daring, the look of one +standing on the sheer verge of any hazard, welcoming any throw of the +dice, fearing nothing and caring nothing. +</P> + +<P> +As he stood, his hand encountered a small hard object in his pocket. +He drew it out. It was a ring, roughly made and holding an uncut +emerald almost square in shape. He remembered that once, in the woods, +he had bought it for a whim from some gipsy caravan—a luck ring. Much +luck it had brought him! Well, it was the gipsy-road now for him. He +drew off his seal ring and thrust the other on his finger in its place. +</P> + +<P> +He went quickly out the front door and down to the entrance pulling his +hat brim well over his eyes on issuing to the street. As he did so he +grazed a lady leisurely passing. It was the plump and pretty Mrs. +Spottiswoode. Her glance met his fairly, but there was no sign of +recognition; she only drew her trim, modish skirt away from the contact +as she passed on. +</P> + +<P> +He walked more rapidly now. He could scarce keep from running—would +have done so but for the thronging crowds. The brandy he had drunk in +the office had roused the devil of craving; it was in his throat now +like the rasp of hot sand-paper and he craved more alcohol with a +desperate craving that would not be denied. At the edge of the open +square which held the railroad station he plunged into a saloon and +pushed through its groups of loungers to the bar. +</P> + +<P> +"A flask of whisky—the best you have," he said. +</P> + +<P> +The bar-tender wiped his hands on his duck jacket and took down a squat +bottle. "O. and S.," he said, affably. "Just blown in to town?" +</P> + +<P> +Harry stared him in the eye. "Wrap that thing up, and be quick about +it!" was his answer. +</P> + +<P> +The man in the duck jacket muttered something under his breath, banged +the package on the bar and rang up the payment on the cash-register +with an angry jingle. +</P> + +<P> +Harry thrust his purchase under his arm, went out, crossed the square +and climbed aboard a train that was drawing out. He went rapidly +forward to the smoker; there he—and the bottle he carried—would be +unnoticed. As he sat down in the rear seat, the conductor passed by. +Harry had no ticket. He handed him a bill. +</P> + +<P> +"Where to?" asked the other briefly. +</P> + +<P> +"How far do you go?" +</P> + +<P> +"Birmingham." +</P> + +<P> +"To Birmingham, then," said Harry. +</P> + +<P> +The afternoon wore on, station after station went by. The man in the +rear seat sat with his eyes straight before him, moveless except as +from time to time he lifted a bottle to his lips and drank thirstily, +avidly. The frenzied pain was gone now, leaving only a dull ache, and +gradually, very gradually, this too slipped away into the void. He was +now once more the man who had fled in his motor from the face of a +convict in a court-room, flying through the night in a jumbled dream, +strung upon a headlong speed through vacuity. +</P> + +<P> +Evening came, with the glamour of peach-blown valleys and honey-lipped +hills, lying under pale stars against the sunset. Night fell, with its +cooler breeze through the windows, its glimpses of quiet, watching +woods, of white mists wreathing across the meadows, of yellow lights. +But Harry took no heed. Only hours later, when the train rolled into a +great rotunda did he turn his head. He did not know where he was. He +did not even wonder. He rose, kicked the emptied bottle under the +seat, and left the train. +</P> + +<P> +He went out of the station. It sat on a ridge above a great river and +on the lower level he had a glimpse of a sordid purlieus of rambling +streets, red-paned windows and gleaming doorways, the soiled earmarks +of the city's slums. +</P> + +<P> +He crossed the street and plunged aimlessly down a narrow alley toward +the water-front. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap17"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XVII +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +LIKE A THIEF IN THE NIGHT +</H4> + +<P> +The potations in the smoking-car had had their first effect. Sevier +had passed from the jumbled dream now—was safe enisled in that strange +fourth-dimensional empire into which he had first wandered during that +wild night-ride in his motor, that region of tense consciousness that +was yet without rule, in which every sense was acute, his brain clear +as ice, but where impressions recorded themselves without +co-ordination. Eye and ear drank in avidly each sight and sound, and +he sniffed the thick smells as a hound sniffs a haunting but forgotten +trail. +</P> + +<P> +As he went further the dwindling signs of respectability vanished. He +was now below the city's "dead-line" where, in segregated wantonness, +vice and license unrolled their audacities fearless of the complaisant +police regulations. +</P> + +<P> +A hundred yards from the greasy docks lining the sluggish current from +which a plumy mist was lifting, a wide screened doorway showed a blaze +of electric-light upon a patch of saw-dust floor. Through it poured +the tinny blare of a gramophone hooting a comic song, mingled with +rumbling laughter and raised voices. It was a low-roofed, shambling +building, planned for the delectation of the barge-man and the +roustabout and now throbbing with their daily—and nightly—pleasures. +Harry halted before it. +</P> + +<P> +"Tough joint, eh?" The voice fell suddenly at his elbow. +</P> + +<P> +He turned. The speaker was red-cheeked and brisk, with dapper +sophistication and inquisitiveness written all over him. His shining +straw hat had a coloured band, there were white pearl buttons on his +patent-leather shoes and a natty stick swung lightly from his gloved +fingers. "I can see you don't belong with that crowd," he said, +nodding sagely toward the entrance. +</P> + +<P> +"No," said Sevier. He was staring at the speaker with a penetrating +intensity, thinking that, but for colouring and costume, they two +somewhat resembled each other—speculating as to the slanting scar on +the other's right cheek, that might have been the memento of a rusty +nail or of a pet panther—thinking of these things and of a thousand +things beside that were only remotely connected with either of them. +</P> + +<P> +"Neither do I, but I take a high dive into it now and then. Let's go +in and have a drink." +</P> + +<P> +In Harry's middle distance another more decorous swing-door vibrated to +and fro, with a sharp smell of hops, a rattle of glasses, a voice +reckless but good-humoured—proposing a like libation. Beyond this in +endless succession were openings and re-openings of a locked cabinet +that had hung somewhere on a wall, and further yet, myriads of goblets, +cut with shining prisms, reflecting rainbow colours on spotless napery. +A drink? +</P> + +<P> +"Why not?" he said, and striking open the door, led the way into the +noisy interior, reeking with stale odours, with strong tobacco-smoke, +with carouse and profanity. He strode across the floor, shouldering +his way unceremoniously through the press, and sat down at a small deal +table that was unoccupied. His companion seated himself opposite. He +was looking at Harry with critical admiration, noting his lithe +athletic build and the certain, confident swing of his movements. His +eye lighted. +</P> + +<P> +"Gad!" he said, with a little laugh. "To tell the truth I wouldn't +have cared to come in here alone, though I've been in a good many shady +boozeries. Allow me to introduce myself. My name's John Stark—that's +the name I play under, that is. I'm an actor. I'm trying out a new +play, the 'Jail-bird.' Perhaps you've seen the bill-boards." +</P> + +<P> +"Of course," said Harry. The title sprang instantly into his mind, +blazoned on a gaudy bill-board against a maple-shaded street: +</P> + +<P CLASS="t3"> +"Do not fail to see this Talented Star<BR> +In his Gripping Drama, <I>The Jail-Bird</I>."<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +It multiplied, stamping itself on a thousand walls, a chromatic +procession tumbling into the distance. The other nodded in a +self-satisfied way. "It's a great play. Got the real human dope in +it. It'll go big, too. That's why I come to these places—to study +'business.' See that teamster with the pock-marked face and the tattoo +on his arm? What a make-up that would be!" +</P> + +<P> +The burly, half-drunken driver, in red-flannel shirt with a snake-whip +in his armpit, his back to the bar, poured from a gurgling black +bottle. "Hear what it says?" he hiccoughed—"'It's +good—s'good—s'good—s'good—s'good!'" +</P> + +<P> +John Stark withdrew his eyes from the fascinating study, as a waiter, +in an apron that had in some remote epoch aspired to white, with a +strip of soiled towelling thrown over one arm, set two thick glasses on +the table, with a surly "well?" +</P> + +<P> +"I'll take a silver fizz," said the actor. +</P> + +<P> +"The same," said Sevier—"and be quick about it!" +</P> + +<P> +The harsh admonition thrust across the noise. The phrase had no +meaning to Sevier, it had been merely the echo of another bidding that +he had given at some other time, in some other world, repeating itself +now when the hidden spring of association was touched. But it brought +a resentful glare from the waiter. The loungers standing nearest +shuffled truculently, and the teamster by the bar turned an ugly look +upon them. The man in the dingy apron thumped down a black demijohn on +the table. +</P> + +<P> +"Take it straight or not at all," he said in a surly tone. +</P> + +<P> +Harry's companion poured both glasses. He leaned across the table with +sparkling eyes. "I'm in the title-role," he confided. "The story is +like this. I'm a business man, and the other chap—he has a grudge +against me—has me in his power. He's the Great What Ho—a regular +top-notcher, plenty of money, a winner with the women, horses, +steam-yacht, everything. The house he lives in was mine, but he's got +it by trickery and seized it while I was abroad. I come back and find +him in possession. But in the house—he doesn't know this, you +see—hidden behind a panel in the library, are papers that will show +him up and put him behind the bars. I've got to have those papers, and +the only way is to get into the place and take them." +</P> + +<P> +He paused and sipped from the glass before him, then resumed: +</P> + +<P> +"Curious thing, luck. I've had no end of trouble getting up the +scenery, but to-day I saw exactly the lay-out I want to picture—a +whacking big house in this very town. Right in the heart of the city +too, not a mile from here, but shut in from the road. Belongs to about +the richest man in the place. I kodaked it for my scene-painter. Look +here." +</P> + +<P> +He took a pencil from his pocket and sketched rapidly on the deal +table-top as he went on. +</P> + +<P> +"It's set in trees and there's a wide, oval porch along the front—like +this—fine old southern effect, eh?—with Cape Jessamine bushes under +the windows. A long wing runs down one side—here. In there is the +library. I come on in a kind of prologue, no lines—shadows and +moonlight, town-hall clock striking off one side—you know. I'm +desperate. I try the doors. They're locked, of course. But there's a +little window on the second floor that's open. I climb up a trellis +and crawl in. There I am in the house." +</P> + +<P> +He stopped and emptied his glass. +</P> + +<P> +"There's a two-minute dark—no curtain, but a quick change, then lights +up and the stage shows the Great What Ho's library, with me on the +threshold, for the opening scene. I get the papers from the panel, and +just then—" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, yes," said Harry. He had been staring steadily at the +other—staring with his outer eyes, but with that curious inner vision, +which was the gift of the intoxicant he had drunk, seeing himself, +detached and moving through the significant scene that was being +sketched before him, his alert but liquor-bound mind filling in +strange, lurid detail which rushed forward to crowd the obscure spaces. +He reached forward and gripped the actor by the arm with a force that +made him wince—"and then—" +</P> + +<P> +A stillness had struck the noisier babble and Harry's mental connection +on a sudden broke. A young woman in the red Jersey and poke-bonnet of +the Salvation Army had passed about the room and was now standing by +the table. She stretched her tambourine. "If you please, gentlemen," +she said. +</P> + +<P> +Harry laid a silver half-dollar in her tambourine and his companion did +the same, when the waiter who had served them spoke to her: "Clear out, +you. You've got your money, now go." +</P> + +<P> +"And be quick about it!" said Harry, distinctly. +</P> + +<P> +The remark had not the excuse of proprietorship and it roused fury in +the sluggish minds about them to whom the addition was extraneous and +gratuitous, a smug insult of one who from his manner belonged to a +class that despised them, offered to one whose daily habit proved that +she did not. With an oath the drunken teamster of the pock-marked +visage lurched forward, rolling a red-flannel sleeve along a hairy +biceps. +</P> + +<P> +The dingy Ganymede thrust him back. "Leave him to me!" he ground +savagely, and turning, struck at Harry with envenomed force. +</P> + +<P> +The fist, however, did not reach home. Harry's brain and eye were +working with the deadly precision of the practised athlete. The +suggestion of combat was complete, and with sober caution and reason +dead, the bodily mechanism rushed to meet it. There was a +lightning-like parry—a crisp, smashing return blow. Then suddenly the +room turned a shambles, a red surging mass of hands that tore, of +thrown missiles, of shattering glass, through which sounded a shrill +whistle and the tattoo of a thorn-baton on the pavement outside. +</P> + +<P> +Two minutes later Harry stood unhurt in the open air, and a blue-jacket +held the door against a cursing pandemonium. "<I>Run</I>, you fool!" he +panted. "I can't hold it but a minute. <I>Run</I>!" +</P> + +<P> +And Harry ran. Not from fear or dread, but in instant response to that +mental spur, without reason, or logic, or conscious thought. The new +mental formula for the present moment superseded the old. The dingy +saloon, the effervescent young Thespian, the fight—all fell away, were +gone, and there was only the rigid empty calm through which he sped, +and far above him the sound of a wind like a silken sea. It was close +on midnight, the more decorous streets into which he presently emerged +deserted, for intermittent clouds were now blotting the moonlight and a +sprinkle of rain was falling. The sparse pedestrians stared or shrank +away, but none followed, no patrolling guardian of the law forbade. He +ran without direction or purpose, until suddenly—he halted. +</P> + +<P> +He had come to the side of a great enclosure, the grounds of a mansion, +surrounded by a high stone wall with tiled top, in which was set a gate +with tall posts holding dim-lit yellow globes. It was not at these, +however, that Harry was looking; his gaze went beyond, where, touched +by the rainy moonlight, stretched the long façade of a Colonial house +with a wide oval porch. At one side was a wing, with a lattice +climbing over its doorway, and the damp air was full of the scent of +jessamine. +</P> + +<P> +He stiffened. The contours fell with fateful correspondence over +another picture which had been etched on his brain that night with the +sharp outlines of a photographic plate. The old spring had been +touched, and the eerie mechanism was responding. It was his own house, +but now it sheltered the Great What Ho, and in that wing was hidden the +thing he must secure for his own salvation! +</P> + +<P> +Harry entered the gate and crept across the lawn, warily, from bush to +bush. In the curious dual-consciousness that seemed to divide his self +into two independent yet identical entities, he had no sensation of +strangeness that he should already have made that slinking journey once +before, that each detail should possess the quality of predestination. +In the shadow of the ivied walls he softly tried the front door. It +was locked, but he had known it would be. He looked up; he had known +what he should see—the small window in the wing, open, as he could see +from the swaying of the light curtain in the air. +</P> + +<P> +He crept to the lattice and deftly and softly drew himself up. No twig +snapped, scarce a leaf rustled beneath his careful movements. In a +moment he touched the sill of the open window and slid inside. +</P> + +<P> +He was in an upper hall and soft, luxurious carpet was under his feet. +By the dim light from the window he crept noiselessly down the stair. +There before him stood the door behind which lay the thing he must +have. He put his hand on the knob, turned it softly and opened the +door. +</P> + +<P> +The mental picture which he had been tracing suddenly frayed and +vanished like a dissolving view. The room was brightly lighted. At +one side sat a great safe, beside whose steel door stood two men, one +tall and thin, whose eyes glittered through the holes of a black +cambric mask, the other short and stocky with red-rimmed eyes and a +shock of sand-coloured hair. +</P> + +<P> +They stood like setters at point, crouching tensely forward, and the +latter held a pistol levelled at him. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap18"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XVIII +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +THE PRICE +</H4> + +<P> +With the sudden disintegration of the mental picture he had been +tracing, and the instant stoppage of the tense action of mind and body, +Harry Sevier came to himself. He awoke as he had done on the night of +the trial, with the abrupt halt of his motor at the +railroad-crossing—awoke instantly to knowledge of himself, but dazed +and shaken, grasping at phantasmagoric fragments that were swiftly +dissolving in his brain, in a bewilderment in which he could only stare +voicelessly at the black mask that confronted him, at the round muzzle +that spelled danger. +</P> + +<P> +The man of the sand-coloured hair spoke: "It ain't him," he said in a +low voice. "Not one of the servants, either." He stepped forward. +"How did you get in?" +</P> + +<P> +"I don't—know," said Harry. "Yes, I—I fancy it was through a window." +</P> + +<P> +"What did you come for?" +</P> + +<P> +"I wanted to—get something." +</P> + +<P> +There was an instant's pause. Then his questioner came forward with a +cat-like tread. His free hand busied itself in deft exploration. "No +gun on him," he said. +</P> + +<P> +Something like a chuckle came from behind the mask. "I reckon he's +telling the truth, but he's a new one and we scared about all out of +his head there ever was in it!" +</P> + +<P> +The other turned one side to where a heavy portière screened an alcove, +parted the curtains and set a chair in the hidden space. He pointed to +it. "Sit there," he gruffly commanded, and to the man in the mask he +added, "Get on with your part of the job. We won't take no risks—I'll +take care of <I>him</I>!" +</P> + +<P> +Harry sat down. The dream-like fragments at which he had been grasping +were gone now into thin air, and out of the misty limbo the past was +growing back: the note he had received, the smashed wall-cabinet, the +fiery drink that scorched his throat, his mad masquerade, the boarding +of the train at the station, the friendly, stupifying flash, then +flight, on and on—and then, this lighted room, the safe, the levelled +weapons! Into what sordid drama of the under-world had he wandered? +</P> + +<P> +He flinched at the pressure of a cold steel ring against his +temple—the man with the sand-coloured hair was "taking care" of him. +The latter leaned forward and peered searchingly into his face. +"Haven't I seen you before, somewheres?" he asked. +</P> + +<P> +"Who knows?" said Harry. He had answered that look by one that, even +as he spoke, had opened to strange intelligence. The stocky frame, the +small red-rimmed eyes, the up-thrust, wiry hair belonged to his client +of that far away trial, the man whom he had sent to a convict's cell +and who now, by route of ball and stripe, had fled to the dismal +demesne of habitual criminality! "Who knows!" Paddy the Brick had not +now the piteous, shrinking look that had been turned to his counsel in +the courtroom! The manhood was gone from the mottled features, which +now wore the furtive look of the hunted, the sign-manual of cunning, +incorrigibility and debauch. +</P> + +<P> +Paddy the Brick withdrew his eyes. The involuntary question had +passed. There was, after all, little in the smooth-shaven countenance +of the man he guarded to suggest a bearded face that his memory +searched for. +</P> + +<P> +"Quiet!" warned the man in the mask, and kneeling by the safe door, +resumed the delicate manipulation which had been so startlingly +interrupted. He turned the combination swiftly and deftly, his +side-face pressed against the unyielding steel, his ear listening +intently to the fall of the tumblers that chattered like elfin +castenets. +</P> + +<P> +Harry sat silent and moveless, sharply conscious of the cold ring +against his temple. Whither had his besotted flight carried him? To +some distant city, into another state perhaps, where he now figured in +a coarse and desperate adventure that might end anywhere, in some +shameful expose which he could not foresee. In whose house was he? +Whose money was it these nightly prowlers intended? And what ironic +demon had beckoned him here to play this passive part in the despoiling? +</P> + +<P> +There was suddenly a sharp click, a turn of the nickelled handle, and +on mute hinges the safe-door opened. "So!" said the man in the mask, +complacently. He began to pull open drawers and ransack pigeon-holes, +his fingers passing deftly through the papers they contained. +</P> + +<P> +On the instant there was a muffled sound in the hall outside—a door +swinging to, and voices. +</P> + +<P> +"<I>S-s-s!</I>" The low hiss was an incarnate menace. The man by the safe +swung the steel door to, but without closing its lock, and snapped off +the lights. The room fell into thick darkness. Harry felt, rather +than heard, that the other had swiftly entered the alcove, and drawn +the portière into place. His companion had made no sound, but the +aching circlet bit hard again into Harry's temple, with a warning as +sharp as it was silent. +</P> + +<P> +The door opened, there was a groping footstep, then the lights went up, +and a woman's voice, clear and imperious, mingled with the lower +answers of the obsequious servant who had shown her in—a familiar +voice at which Harry's blood seemed to grow still in his veins: +</P> + +<P> +"No matter how late he is, I will wait. You say he is at his +office—is it so near as that? Yes, I think you may send for him—no, +wait—that telephone on the desk! Could I speak with him? No—I think +after all I would rather wait. What number did you say? +'Seven-thirty-two Sumner?' Thank you. Then if he does not come soon, +I will call him up. Thank you—no, I want nothing." +</P> + +<P> +Harry repressed an impulse to cry aloud. A thin streak of light showed +between the edges of the silken hanging, through which the man in the +mask was peering, and for a slender instant, under the crook's elbow, +he could see into the room. The slender figure standing there under +the chandelier was Echo Allen! +</P> + +<P> +She was in a dark travelling dress and wore a light veil through which +her profile looked strained and white. The unexpected sight of her +intensified the haggard pain of heart which had come back to Harry with +his awakening, and this was staggered by the knowledge that they two +were together in this unknown dwelling. +</P> + +<P> +The door closed upon the servant. Behind the portière the red-rimmed +eyes peered questioningly into the eyelet holes of the black mask. +They said as plainly as speech, "There is only the woman. Why not make +for the open—now?" But the other was an older hand. The room had but +the single door and the servant might be standing on the other side. +Grim danger lurked in hue and cry, and there was always the chance that +the woman might weary of waiting and go. He had a liking for the long +chance. He shook his head. +</P> + +<P> +Harry's straining ears caught now the dragging rustle of a skirt. Echo +was moving slowly across the floor, and in a moment he saw her again +through the slender opening. She was standing tense and straight, her +hands wrung together, finger twisting against finger, before the desk +telephone. He saw her hand go out to the instrument, then draw back as +though it had been a poisonous snake. Then suddenly he saw her seize +the transmitter and put it to her ear. The bell whirred. +</P> + +<P> +"Madison, seven-thirty-two." +</P> + +<P> +There was a pause, in which she repeated the number, and in it Harry +felt that her face had hardened and set, like some cooling plastic +beneath an invisible mould. +</P> + +<P> +"Is that—is it ... Mr. Cameron Craig?" +</P> + +<P> +In spite of his iron control, Harry could not repress a start. He knew +now where he was! The house behind whose curtain he perforce skulked +with a brace of thieves, was Cameron Craig's! And she, on this very +day, had journeyed here too. A sense of an overfate, sardonic and +unescapable, rushed upon him. What a topsy-turveydom of chance, what a +dove-tailing of accident, had wrought for this strange <I>contretemps</I>! +In the instant she waited a harrowing question stabbed him. What was +she doing here, to-night, at midnight—in this environment which had +bred unseemly stories—to enter which, under such circumstances, a +woman must be unmindful of what should be most dear? +</P> + +<P> +"... Do you know my voice? Yes, you are right.... Unbelievable, yes. +Many things are unbelievable that—happen. Listen. I am at your +house, in your library.... No! Wait. I have something to say to you, +<I>now</I>. You shall answer it first. Once you asked me to marry you. I +will do so, on one condition.... The—the letters written by my +father. You will not use them, publish them. You will give them into +my hands.... Yes.... One has been photographed—yes, the plate. You +swear to do so, when I am your wife? ... Yes, to-night—if +you—wish.... What? In—in five minutes? ..." +</P> + +<P> +The receiver clattered down upon the desk, as she sank into a chair and +covered her face with her hands. To her the broken sentences had +knelled hope gone, the passing of youth and love, the coming of a night +in which was no star; but to the man sitting in such assiduous +stillness behind the curtains, they had told a story that sent the warm +blood coursing through his veins. Instead of being false to him, Echo +was really sacrificing herself on the altar of name and family. She +did not love the man with whom she had just spoken! It was constraint +that had sent her there at that dubious hour, to make a bitter bargain. +Letters written by her father? What they were—in what way +compromising—Harry could not guess. Some indiscreet correspondence +perhaps, which, twisted out of context, might be made ground of +malicious political criticism. He knew her love for her father. In +some way she had learned of these letters, had scented danger to him, +and now would ward the harm from him at any cost to herself! "Think as +gently of me as you can"—the words of her note passed through Harry's +mind. When she wrote that she had known that she should give herself +to Craig! He felt a whirl of rage. The cowardly, contemptible cad, +who would have his desire at the cost of all that was decent and +clean-handed! It should never be, never, never! Why else had fate +dropped him there, like a stone from a sling? And yet for the moment +he was as helpless as a rat in a trap. There, only a half-dozen steps +away lay those letters, the safe door unlocked. Yet the steely +pressure on his temple told him that a single word, a move, and he +would be ingloriously past rendering aid to anybody, with a bullet in +his skull. +</P> + +<P> +Harry was conscious that the two men beside him exchanged glances—they +were going to make a dash for it. His every nerve tightened. But at +that instant the door opened upon the obsequious servant. "Did you +ring, Madame?" he asked. +</P> + +<P> +"I rang the telephone," she replied dully. "I called up Mr. Craig. He +is coming." +</P> + +<P> +"Very good, madame." This time he did not leave, but moved about the +room, setting straight a book upon the table, adjusting a vase, +glancing furtively at her the while. The moment for flight had passed. +</P> + +<P> +Endless minutes ensued. Then in the strained silence there fell a +sharp step outside, and the servant went quickly from the room. Harry +felt a little tremor run over him. There was the sound of a key +grating in a lock. The outer door opened and clanged shut. +</P> + +<P> +Behind the portière Harry sat motionless, the muzzle of the weapon at +his temple, his hair stirring to the suppressed breathing above his +head, and the man in the mask shifted his felt-shod feet, restlessly +but without sound. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap19"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XIX +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +PADDY THE BRICK INTERVENES +</H4> + +<P> +"I could not believe your voice." The heavy tones jarred across the +quiet. "I could not believe that it was actually true!" +</P> + +<P> +"Do you accept my offer?" Echo's voice was without a tremor; it held +the same hard quality that controlled her features. +</P> + +<P> +"Accept!" He came toward her—would have taken her hands, but that she +drew back. "Do you remember what I told you that day in your garden, a +year ago—that nothing counted, nothing but you? For you I would +barter every ambition I have ever known. I would sell the world, if I +had it!" +</P> + +<P> +"When you told me that," she said steadily, "I answered that I did not +love you. I have not changed in that regard, nor shall I ever change. +I can bring you no love, but I can—can marry you." +</P> + +<P> +He laughed harshly. "Very well; I would not have it different, after +all. I am not made on the pattern of other men: I would rather take +you against your will—you will be all the more mine! I love even that +fine disdain of yours! For it shall not last—I swear that! You shall +love me in the end, as I have loved you!" +</P> + +<P> +"Loved!" she repeated, with an accent of chill and wondering scorn. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, loved!" The words were almost a cry: they held fierce protest, +even anger, yet there was in them a kind of appeal that lent them a +sombre and tragic dignity. "But you despised me! You had stood first +of all things. But if you could be nothing to me, then the game I +played stood second. I played, as always, to win. The cards fell +oddly—your father's letters, no matter how, came into my hands. They +were to my purpose, and I would have used them. Why should I hold +back? Out of regard for him? I regard no man!" +</P> + +<P> +"Yet he is my father. And you profess—ah, if this is love, I had +rather you hated me! I know nothing of a love that is neither brave +nor compassionate, that strikes at the aged and defenceless and that is +without—honour!" +</P> + +<P> +He had not taken his eyes from her face, and now there grew in them a +strange, haggard fire. Relentless and unscrupulous as was that love of +his, Harry could have pitied him at that moment. "Honour?" he said. +"It is an empty word to me! What is honour, what is anything, to me +without you—Echo, Echo!" +</P> + +<P> +"If you love me so—and now, indeed, I will believe it—give me the +letters!" She took a step toward him, her hands clasped together. "Be +as chivalrous as you are strong! Do not do this ignoble thing to break +my life! I may be your friend, if not—that other. Surely you cannot +want to take me at such a price! Do this and all my life long I will +be grateful! Oh, I would ask you on my knees! Give me the letters!" +</P> + +<P> +He looked at her where she stood breathlessly, with arms extended, her +face bent and pleading, and the sight opened wide within him an abyss +that thronged thick with evil passions. The gentler purpose that for a +heart-beat had fluttered white wings above the chasm dropped +plummet-like into the depths. Give her up? Now, when she came to him +with her offer? Resign her—to that tippling <I>dilettante</I>, that +flamboyant fop and fool who had drowned his success in a bottle? Not +he! A savage elation sprang up in him. +</P> + +<P> +"When you are my wife!" he said. +</P> + +<P> +She straightened, withdrawing her arms with a little gesture of despair +and relinquishment. "Where are the letters?" +</P> + +<P> +He pointed to the safe. "They are there." +</P> + +<P> +"When will you give them to me?" +</P> + +<P> +"To-night—the same hour you marry me. You shall burn them if you +like, here—in this very room—with your own hands." +</P> + +<P> +"You swear?" +</P> + +<P> +"I do. And whatever else men may say of me, there is no man living who +can say I have ever lied." +</P> + +<P> +There was an instant's silence and when Craig spoke again all feeling +had vanished from his voice. He was once more the deliberate and +incisive man of action. He snapped the lid of his watch. +</P> + +<P> +"It is very late," he said, "but it can be managed. It shall be at the +hotel—you can rest there while I make the necessary arrangements. My +chauffeur is off-duty to-night, but it is only a block away, +fortunately. Shall you mind walking?" +</P> + +<P> +"No," she said, apathetically. +</P> + +<P> +Harry was holding himself hard. They were going. He saw clearly his +course of action. His two partners in that sorry escapade might have +what they had come for—he could compound with them, could take the +letters to the hotel and put them into Echo's hands. She would never +need to know how he had gained them—that drunken episode, whose very +memory must bring a shaming flush to his cheek, should be buried +forever! The letters would not have come to her from Craig, and she +would stand absolved of her promise. But even as this ran through his +mind, fate thrust its hidden hand from the cloud. +</P> + +<P> +"One moment," said Craig. "When I came in, it was beginning to rain. +You will need a cloak of some sort." He turned abruptly to the +curtained alcove. +</P> + +<P> +The pressure on Harry's temple relaxed. The black mask thrust forward, +the man with the sand-coloured hair parted the hangings—his +outstretched arm shot out toward the advancing figure. Harry's gaze +saw something red leap up from Craig's temple, even before the +terrifying concussion rocked the room—a sound threaded by Echo's +scream. +</P> + +<P> +There was a rush, a curse and a scramble, flying feet and a dismayed +shout from the hall—then a shocked quiet in which he stood +disconcerted and appalled, staring between the shielding curtains, +through pungent smoke-wreaths, at a girl, her hand over her eyes, who +shrank in overmastering terror from a massive form that lay collapsed +on the rug before her—Cameron Craig, inert and still, blind and deaf +now to sight and sound, the brain empty of scheming, the full cup of +his ambition dashed from his lips by the crashing bullet of a slinking +house-breaker. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap20"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XX +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +WHAT MATTERED MOST +</H4> + +<P> +With that scream Harry's every nerve had become as tense as wire. In +his mind's eye he saw her innocency tangled in this hideous web of +burglary—perhaps of murder, her name on every lip, her face blazoned +in every yellow extra, as the "woman in the case!" The crisis spelled +<I>now</I> and he acted with swift instinct. +</P> + +<P> +He snatched the black mask from the floor and adjusted it to his own +face, then darted to the safe and jerked open its heavy door. While +the retreating servant's alarm still echoed from the hallway of the +empty wing, his fingers, with the swiftness of desperation, went +searching the papers in the safe. He came almost instantly upon what +he sought—a thin packet of letters, tied together with a small +photographic plate, ticketed with the name "Beverly Allen." +</P> + +<P> +Echo had shrunk back, was leaning now against the wall, thriving terror +of him in her eyes. He came toward her. +</P> + +<P> +"Here!" he said, his voice muffled by the mask. "The letters! Take +them and go—go instantly!" +</P> + +<P> +"He has—killed him!" she gasped. "Why do you—" +</P> + +<P> +Harry was sick with apprehension. As in the instant of drowning the +smothering intelligence sees pass in vivid review before it the +innumerable mosaic of a busy life-time, so he saw, swiftly arrayed in +the imminent climax, the perilous hazards by which she was surrounded. +Suppose Craig was dead, and she were apprehended, the letters put in +evidence, and she told the truth, word for word, as she knew it. If +her own estimate of their significance was a correct one, might not the +most sinister suspicion then rest upon her? And if, as seemed likely, +she was wrong in that surmise—even were the presence of accidental +burglars proven—what could explain her presence there, alone in +Craig's midnight library? Would it not seem to the great sceptical, +sophisticated world only a tale invented to cover the old hackneyed +story of a woman's infatuation? Would it not ruin her? He thrust the +packet into her shaking hands, seized her arm and dragged her to the +hall. +</P> + +<P> +"Quick!" he said, roughly. "The house is roused! Hurry—for heaven's +sake!" He thrust her through the outer door. "Down the path to the +gate! Go!" +</P> + +<P> +She looked at him a breathless instant. On the floor above them a +window was flung open and a shout rang out. Then, drawing a breath +that was a sob, she caught the letters to her breast, turned, and fled +in an anguish of speed through the misty shrubbery. +</P> + +<P> +In the bluntness of the dilemma Harry's only thought had been to get +her away and speedily—then to make his own escape. For he himself +stood also in evil case. If Echo's presence there would be difficult +to explain, what could be said of his own? To whom, save perhaps the +occasional student of aberrant mental phenomena, would the true story +of his blind and besotted adventuring seem credible? It came to him +instantly now, however, that to insure her safe retreat, he must +jeopardise, perhaps fatally, his own. The two house-breakers had no +doubt planned their flitting—possibly a handy ladder in some hidden +angle of the wall; but the open gate was the only route he knew, and he +had sent Echo by this way. For him to follow in her footsteps would +draw the damnable hue and cry and double the odds against her. She +needed, perhaps, only minutes, but the stir of frightened awakening +that sounded through the upper floor told him that for him even seconds +might be fatal. Great beads of sweat broke on his forehead. +</P> + +<P> +And what an alternative! He, Harry Sevier, of position and clean +honour, to be arrested red-handed, in apparent comradeship with +criminals, a partner in a desperate attempt at robbery under arms! To +be haled to court, to sit as he had seen men sit so often, under a +perilous judgment! For with the logic of the legal mind perilous +indeed Harry knew it would be. If Craig lay dead in the room behind +him, he would be charged with his murder! A chill ran over him. +</P> + +<P> +As these thoughts rushed through his mind, Harry passed through a +crucial episode of his mental life—its first vital and supreme moment. +It was not of himself he thought now. It was only of Echo. What +became of him mattered little. It was she who mattered most! At +whatever risk to himself he must turn the pursuit from her! +</P> + +<P> +A burly man-servant, bareheaded and coatless, came panting from the +rear between the trees. Lest he take the path toward the gate, Harry +blundered, in his view, across the lighted porch and dashed around the +wing, the other giving instant cry. Harry led him on, doubling about +the shrubbery. Near at hand the wall reared, hopelessly high and +without a break. He skirted a huddle of servants' quarters, rounded +the main building and came again to the front. And then, approaching +at a double-quick across the lawn, he caught the flash of a bull's-eye. +With a wave of thankfulness he realised that the helmeted figure who +carried it was coming from the gate. Echo had passed through safely! +</P> + +<P> +Unseen he slipped again into the shadow of the great open door from +which he had come. Until that moment he had not realised that he still +held in his hand the black mask. There was nothing to do now—his own +escape was impossible, but he had saved her! +</P> + +<P> +Suddenly the hall light went up, and with it a brusque voice spoke from +the stairway. +</P> + +<P> +"Hands up! I'm covering you. He's here, lads—we've got him cornered. +Tell that silly maid to quit screaming and ring up the police." +</P> + +<P> +Harry had lifted his hands above his head. The black mask fell at his +feet. "All right," he said. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap21"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XXI +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +CRAIG'S WAY +</H4> + +<P> +A half-hour later a surgeon and a nurse had been hurriedly summoned +from the hospital, the wounded man had been carried to an upper +chamber, and Harry Sevier set in a room across the hall from the +library, under guard, hand-cuffs on his wrists. A blue-coated +policeman stood grimly at his side, another at the door, and from time +to time the white, awed countenance of some servant appeared to stare +at him from the threshold and disappear. +</P> + +<P> +His own face, though haggard, was apparently unmoved by the strenuous +excitement that hung about the place, yet behind the affected +nonchalance his brain was in a turmoil of hope and of dread. In the +swift and breathless decision that the event had forced upon him he had +not had time to weigh all chances. It had seemed then that the vise +must grip either him or Echo, and that the choice lay in his hands. In +the moments that followed, however, as he sat moveless in the strident +confusion, he had realised that the problem had been by no means so +simple, and it had come to him with a pang that Echo's certain safety +had lain only in his own escape. +</P> + +<P> +She now believed that she had been extricated from danger by a common +thief who, in his rifling of the safe, had seen the letters she pleaded +with Craig for, and in the final tragic moment had taken pity on her +plight. When she learned that one of those house-breakers had been +Harry Sevier, what then? She would never believe him the vulgar +criminal! Her imagination would rush to another explanation which +would give his presence there a dismal significance. She would +conclude that he had somehow discovered the strait in which she +conceived her father stood, and in an attempt to retrieve the letters +had met Craig's chicanery with technical crime—made use, which to him +had seemed justifiable, of cracksmen, and with them had been caught in +the emergency whose sudden panic had evoked that shot from the alcove! +Whichever way the tragedy turned, it would be infinitely darkened for +her by the reflection that it had been her strait which had brought the +trouble upon him. +</P> + +<P> +And if murder had been done, and she learned with shrinking heart that +he, Harry, stood accused by the law, what then? She knew that his hand +had not pulled the trigger, for she had seen the face of the shooter. +Her gasping exclamation—"He has—killed him!"—had made that clear to +Harry. She would rush to the rescue, forgetful of all else, and with +her testimony, bring down the avalanche upon her! +</P> + +<P> +On the heels of these reflections a thrill of hope had come to him. +Craig was not yet dead—there had been no sign from above-stairs since +the hurried arrival of the surgeon. Also it was anticipated that he +would recover consciousness. Harry's knowledge of criminal procedure +told him that this was the meaning of his long detention there. Should +consciousness come, if merely for an appreciable interval, he would be +brought face to face with the wounded man. It was this that all +awaited now, and in it Harry discerned the sole possibility of saving +the situation. +</P> + +<P> +"Craig must have seen him when he fired!" he told himself. "For the +fraction of a second they were face to face. If he is able to make a +statement, it will clear me! He will be silent about Echo, too, for he +will expect, if he lives, to make her his wife—it will be a long time, +probably, before he misses the letters! And if I am disassociated, by +Craig himself, from the attack on his life, there will no longer be any +question of her involving herself to defend me!" His heart lightened +and the great load seemed to lift from his soul. It was the +implication of Echo that had made the situation impossible—the +unbelievable coincidence of their joint presence—in damnable +propinquity with the shooting. With Echo eliminated and he himself +free from that cowardly indictment, would not all yet be well? He was +well enough known. He was no sordid house-breaker—in spite of the +humiliating incident of his entrance there that night! +</P> + +<P> +His thought broke, as a spruce young man, with the air of authority +which is the perquisite and prerequisite of the private-secretary, +entered and whispered with the guardian at the door. +</P> + +<P> +Harry's heart seemed to stop beating. "Is he—dead?" he asked. +</P> + +<P> +The young man looked at him coldly. "Not yet." +</P> + +<P> +"Will he live?" +</P> + +<P> +There was a longer pause before the other replied: "It's too soon to +tell yet. It's up to you to hope so, I imagine." +</P> + +<P> +He whispered again with the officer, then crossed the hall to the +library, which he entered, closing the door behind him. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +When the secretary reappeared he went quickly up the stair and along a +hall. There he tapped on a door and opened it. +</P> + +<P> +The room disclosed was the one in which Craig lay. At one side was a +small table covered with a white cloth, with a <I>mêlée</I> of nickelled +instruments, rolls of absorbent bandaging and a basin of reddened +liquid. The air was full of the sickish-sweet <I>halitus</I> of some drug. +Craig's head on the pillow was wound with the white swathing and the +nurse stood beside the bed. The doctor came forward, and the secretary +spoke to him in an undertone. +</P> + +<P> +All at once Craig opened his eyes. He looked acutely at the faces so +near him, the cloth-covered table with its instruments, the +white-capped nurse. +</P> + +<P> +"I—know," he said. He tried to lift a hand to his bandaged head. +"How—bad?" +</P> + +<P> +The doctor laid a professional hand on the one that strayed across the +coverlet. "We want to pull you through, Mr. Craig," he said with +soothing assurance, "and you must help us by wiping every anxiety from +your mind. Only a dozen words with your secretary here, to help you +stop even thinking, and then you are going to sleep." +</P> + +<P> +The young man came to the bed-side. "It was an attempted burglary, as +you probably realised, sir. Two men were hidden in the library and you +were shot when they tried to get away. One of them has been caught. +The servants say a lady was with you at the time and the police want to +know who she was." +</P> + +<P> +Craig did not reply immediately. Echo had slipped away in the +confusion! Well, so much the better. Her presence could not have +helped. It was no more to his interest than to hers—since she was to +be his wife—that the story of her midnight call should be bruited +abroad. "I—don't know—her," he said. +</P> + +<P> +"I'll tell them so," said the secretary. "The safe had been opened, +but its contents are practically intact. I have checked up all the +papers on the list and there seems to be only one thing missing. +Perhaps you took that out yourself. It is the last item on the list—a +package of letters." +</P> + +<P> +A quick gleam crossed the white face on the pillow. "Gone? No—no. +Impossible. They were—of no—value to—any one but me." +</P> + +<P> +"You may have put them in your desk," said the other. He turned to the +surgeon. "The police want to bring up the man for identification." +</P> + +<P> +The man of medicines frowned. "I suppose it has to be," he said. +"Tell them to do so quickly. Only a word," he warned the wounded man. +</P> + +<P> +A moment or two later the secretary tapped again at the door and it +opened upon the two policemen. Harry walked between, the chain on his +wrists clinking lightly as he stepped. One of them came forward to the +foot of the great bed. +</P> + +<P> +"You saw the man who shot you, Mr. Craig?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes." +</P> + +<P> +He beckoned and Harry and his guardian moved forward into range of +vision. +</P> + +<P> +"You solemnly swear that what you shall say is the truth?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes." +</P> + +<P> +"Is this the one?" +</P> + +<P> +Craig stared—a look of negation that made Harry's heart leap. It was +a look also that held no recognition, and in that instant, for the +first time since that night's harrowing series of events had begun, +Harry remembered that he stood in strange guise, in unaccustomed +clothes and with smooth-shaven chin. +</P> + +<P> +But into the eyes that gazed from the pillow recognition speedily +came—recognition strangely commingled of incredulity, amaze, +distempered suspicion, leaping swiftly to a slow, deadly certainty. A +lurid sequence was running across the fevered mind that the man +confronting him could not read: +</P> + +<P> +Harry Sevier sculking there and disguised—one of the burglars! The +missing letters—Echo had gone with them! It had been a cunning, +hypocritical plot, then, with a hired safe-robber and thug—and they +had tricked and baffled him. Craig gasped. His eyes suffused with +blood. He had said that he had not known the woman. Yet he could +still score! Living or dying, he could drag down Harry Sevier to a +black depth from which he should never rise again! +</P> + +<P> +He laughed, a harsh jarring laugh. His face became convulsed. He +tried to lift himself on an elbow. The nurse thrust her strong arms +beneath the pillow and raised him. He pointed his finger at Harry. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes!" he said in a crackling whisper. "He is the man who—did it! +He—shot me!" +</P> + +<P> +"Do you know him?" The officer spoke clearly, leaning forward. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes. I—he is—" +</P> + +<P> +But that was all. With a final vain effort, his head fell back on the +pillow. That last flare of rage, of revengeful hatred, had exhausted +the sick vitality, and he was gone into unconsciousness. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap22"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XXII +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +HARRY DECIDES +</H4> + +<P> +The steel handcuff bit more hardly into Harry's wrist, but he did not +feel it. His eyes were fixed and his face had grown grey. The +accusation, with all its shuddering implications, had surged over him +like the assurance of the unescapable end, the last engulfing wave of +hopeless finality which, in its subsidence, left him cold and still. +Malice and hatred had closed the door of hope. +</P> + +<P> +His sacrifice had gone for nothing. He could not save Echo. The +matter had been taken from his hands. She must be involved. If murder +had been done, her passionate denial in his defence would no doubt +suffice to save him—he knew his southern juries!—but at what a price +to her would be his salvation! For though sufficient doubt would be +insinuated to legally acquit him, in the eyes of their world harrowing +suspicions must always cling to her. Collusion between her and +himself, her lover, to secure compromising letters, a guilty +understanding embracing possible murder! A midnight <I>rendezvous</I> with +one lover, converted into swift tragedy by the vengeful pursuit of the +other! So the speculations would run, and the baleful whispers would +follow her all her life. What matter though she married him? Would +love make up for that? +</P> + +<P> +It was the Harry Sevier of remorseless logic, of clear thinking and +rigid analysis, who reasoned now. +</P> + +<P> +A tall old clock stood at the turn of the echoing stair and as he +descended between his two uniformed attendants, grimly watchful of his +every movement, he noted mechanically that it was two o'clock. It came +to him with a chill and awed amazement how much might happen within one +round of the clock. When those hands had last pointed to two o'clock +he had stood in his office, a man of reputation and newly-ordered life, +with all his heart beating to love; now he was disgraced, the woman he +loved about to know the shame and hideous notoriety of scandal, both of +them to be pilloried together as principals in another of those +horrifying revelations of double-life which at periodic intervals shock +a community's decorum! +</P> + +<P> +It was not for himself he was thinking first. His pain for Echo +swallowed up his own. As he sat in the cab between his guardians, +bound for the station-house and the police interrogatory that should +fling abroad its sensation in the morning's papers, his composure +crumbled. He bent and put his cold face in his colder hands. His lips +moved voicelessly. +</P> + +<P> +"Echo ... Echo!" he whispered. "You have had my love, you have it now. +You could have my life, if I could give it—every day, every drop of my +blood, would not be enough to pay the price of what you must bear! But +it is out of my power. I thought I could save you, my darling! But I +can't.... I can't.... If I might only suffer alone, and you never +know!" +</P> + +<P> +He lifted his head with a start. A thought had darted to his mind like +an impinging ray of light. Why <I>should</I> she ever know? Why should any +one know—if Craig died? Only Craig who had known him in the past, had +recognised him as Harry Sevier. Perhaps that was the greatest risk he +should have to run. He could take refuge in silence, tell nothing, +explain nothing. She would not know that the real shooter had not been +taken. Could he maintain under the searching purview of the law that +anonymity which he had sought to insure during the debauch into which +he had so avidly plunged yesterday afternoon? Why not? He had so +adjusted his home affairs, luckily, that a long time—perhaps many +months—would elapse before his absence would be narrowly questioned. +He was now in a city where he was not known: hundreds of miles of steel +rails lay between him and the crowds to whom he was a familiar figure. +His dark beard—so distinguishing a feature—was gone. He had +discarded the characteristic gold-rimmed eye-glasses. Not an article +of clothing he wore bore his name. His present face might be flung on +printed pages to the four winds, and who, even of those who had seen +him day in and day out, would say, "It is Harry Sevier!" +</P> + +<P> +There were but two contingencies. If Craig recovered sufficient +consciousness to speak the name that had fainted on his lips when they +two had been face to face in that room of hurried surgery—then his +incognito would fall and fate must have its way. If Craig died without +recovering consciousness—this, provided his own identity was not +discovered, was the one way out for Echo. +</P> + +<P> +For him it meant, probably, the last risk. He had now to meet no mere +assumption of guilt, but an accusation, direct and unqualified, made +under oath, in what might well be the hour of death. He could not +offer in rebuttal evidence of character, reputation and standing. He +was deliberately refusing to call his only witness to the fact. Yet he +did not waver. The Harry Sevier who under the stress of impulse had +acted so swiftly to save the woman he loved, elected the same choice +now. +</P> + +<P> +He would do it. Whatever the risk, whatever the ultimate cost to him, +he would do it! +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap23"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XXIII +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +THE BROKEN PICTURE +</H4> + +<P> +"Hyuh yo' is, honey, smack-dab on time!" called 'Lige's cheery voice, +as he took Echo's bag. "Yo' fo'got ter say which train yo' comin' back +on yistiddy, so ah ben waitin' wid dee cya'age fo dee las' fo'. Ah was +figuratin' on yo' gittin' hyuh fo' dinnah, sho'." +</P> + +<P> +As they bowled along toward home Echo wondered if she could really be +the same girl who had driven away the day before along those self-same +streets! The strenuous events through which she had passed seemed the +terrifying creation of a dream, a nightmarish panorama of the sick +imagination, so wild and incredible all appeared in the serene light of +this day: The painful scene in Craig's library that had ended in swift +tragedy, with the apparition between the portières of that baleful +face—with its narrow eyes and upthrust of nondescript hair it had +stamped itself ineffacably upon her memory!—the deafening shot and the +after confusion—those breathless moments when she had run along the +wet path, with a sense of flashing lights and alarm behind her—her +safe emergence into the demure street, where she dared not run, +compelling herself to walk albeit ready to faint with fear at sight of +a patrolling policeman—the ghastly delay in the stuffy waiting-room of +the station where she had checked her bag on arrival—the suffocating +relief when at last the express pulled out, bearing her away +unchallenged. +</P> + +<P> +Through the long night she had tossed feverishly in her berth, without +undressing, at intervals feeling the meaning of the catastrophe in +which she had figured surge over her in a flood. That catastrophe +itself had saved her from one horror: but for it she would now be the +wife of Cameron Craig—a thought that made her shiver. Now she was +safe! In all that trip, fortunately, she had encountered no one she +knew. She had seen but one servant at the house and in his presence +had worn a light veil. Only Craig had known who she was! What if she +had been taken—held as a witness? How could she have explained her +presence except by the letters for whose suppression she had been ready +to give her life's happiness? As in imagination she saw her father and +herself pictured in the yellow press, the centre of gossip and +humiliating notoriety, she hugged the letters to her breast with +intensest gratitude toward the desperado who had extricated her from +the instant crisis. With what swift self-possession he had acted for +her safety! That in that lightning-like emergency he should have even +thought of the letters filled her with astonishment. Over and over +again she tried to picture his face behind the mask, as his hand had +held out the packet to her. Her senses had been shocked keenly alive +at the moment: she had even noted—as in tense crises one notes +inconsequent trifles—the ring on his finger with its curious, square +green stone. A thousand times she lost herself in wonder that a man +capable of such a deed to an unknown woman could yet be a common +burglar, one of the desperate gang whose leader was now awaiting trial, +and whose malignant face and levelled pistol haunted her. Then the +shuddering thought would roll over her that she, Echo Allen, had +witnessed the awful act of murder, and she would hide her face in her +pillow, trembling and spent. Dawn had long been whitening the windows +when the strained nerves relaxed and the body, fatigued by two +sleepless nights, found fitful rest. +</P> + +<P> +The sun had been high when she awoke and by the time she had made her +toilette and drunk a cup of coffee she had reached the little station +for which she had ostensibly started the preceding day. A rambling +hack had taken her to the home of her aunt—a recluse who had for a +dozen years regarded the outer world through the blurred medium of +semi-invalidism, absorbed in her languid reading and her flowers. On +arrival Echo had found the frail figure lying out among her roses, with +white, wild butterflies flaunting about her, stronger than she had been +for months past, and free from the querulous humours which generally +held her. So keen was her delight in her betterment that Echo had +found it easy to accomplish her own departure after luncheon, though +she generally stayed the night. There was for the present, therefore, +no added absence to be accounted for, and the lapse of time might never +have to be explained. +</P> + +<P> +As she drove now from the station through the bustling, down-town +streets toward Midfields, the knowledge that her father's secret was +safe overshadowed all the pain through which she had passed. The +dreadful memory dulled in the sunshine and the sense of security buoyed +her. She would never have to tell her part in that terrible night to +any one. Not even to Harry: she could tell him that she had never +loved any one but him: that it had been misunderstanding that had +driven her to send him that unhappy note. Her father himself need +never be made aware that she knew his secret. It would be forever dead +and buried! +</P> + +<P> +She bade 'Lige stop at the post-office. At her aunt's she had wrapped +the letters in thick wrapping-paper and sealed and tied the packet, and +this she now addressed to her father, printing the words in a large, +round hand. Then she bought some stamps, affixed them at one of the +desks that lined the corridor and smudged them with ink to simulate a +postmark. Once at home it would be easy to slip the parcel among his +evening mail. He would believe that Craig had relented of his purpose, +would destroy the letters, and the danger would be gone forever! +</P> + +<P> +Lastly, standing in the thronging thoroughfare, at the same dusty +little desk, on a sheet of paper which she bought at the stamp-window, +she wrote to Harry Sevier: +</P> + +<BR> + +<P CLASS="letter"> +Forget the note I sent you yesterday. Count that it was never written, +that everything—everything!—is as it was when we sat on the porch +together the day before. I can't write the rest—but come to me +to-night, and I will tell you. +<BR><BR> +ECHO. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +She sealed and addressed this—as an afterthought, marking it +<I>urgent</I>—and went out to the carriage. A few minutes later the horses +drew up again, this time before the populous office-building that held +Harry's offices. +</P> + +<P> +She climbed the stair slowly, her heart hammering. She intended to +hand the note to his clerk. If Harry had gone home, it would be sent +to him there. On the landing she stopped, her breath coming quickly. +The mahogany door was open and she could see a little way into the +outer office. If she came face to face with him, what should she say? +</P> + +<P> +But no sound of voices, no rustle of paper or scratch of pen, came to +her. She went nearer—the place was empty. She took a hesitant step +or two into the room. The door of the inner office was open—that was +empty too, and its big desk closed. Harry was not there, but the +clerk, at least, should not be far off, as the door had stood wide. +She went closer and peered into the inner office. Facing her from the +wall was a small cabinet, its door, from which splinters of opaque +glass were scattered about the rugs, smashed through as if by a heavy +blow. Beneath it, on the desk-top, was a black bottle and a stained +glass, tipped on its side. +</P> + +<P> +All at once she started. She had caught sight of something that lay in +the fire-place. She went and picked it up: it was a picture of +herself—one she had never known Harry possessed—a photograph of her +portrait that had been hung in a certain spring salon in Paris. It had +been framed in silver, but frame and picture had been broken across, +savagely torn and twisted into a remnant of metal and cardboard. +</P> + +<P> +She dropped the defaced thing with a little cry and caught a hand to +her breast. What must he have been thinking in that moment of ruthless +destruction? It had been after he had read her note to him! Her +cheeks flamed. Did he now despise her for what he had thought her +flippancy, or hate her for having taken his love only to throw it away +like an old glove? As she looked again at the riven cabinet and the +bottle on the desk, a shiver of dread seized her. From the silent +symbols there stood forth outlines that frightened her. +</P> + +<P> +She went slowly out to the hall, the letter she had intended to leave +crushed up in her hand. At the top of the stair stood a tall window +and she halted in its embrasure and leaned against the sill, hearing +dully the muffled clack of the street and trying to see a mental way +through the confusing conjectures that were leaping, like lurking +beasts of prey, upon her. As she stood there voices sounded behind +her, coming from the other end of the hall—the clerk was returning +with a comrade: +</P> + +<P> +"'No,' says he. 'Don't know <I>when</I> I'll come back.' Thought he looked +a bit off coloured, too. Told me to close up the office till I heard +from him, and not to forward anything. Rum go, eh?" +</P> + +<P> +"Seems like mighty poor business," ventured the other. +</P> + +<P> +The clerk sniffed. "Business!" he exclaimed. "Much Sevier cares about +that! A man with a brain like his and a silver tongue to boot doesn't +need business! But after that speech of his the other day I should +think he'd sit tight as wax to those Civic Club people. They're going +to make a real campaign of it and he could get on the ticket sure. +It'd be a <I>cinch</I>! Why he wants to light out abroad somewhere beats +<I>me</I>! Well, <I>I</I> don't care how long he stays. I'm going to shut up +the shebang to-night and put in some good licks for my law-examination." +</P> + +<P> +They entered the office and the door closed upon their voices. +</P> + +<P> +Echo stood motionless, looking down into the street. Harry had gone +away! He had gone with despair and anger, or worse than anger, against +her in his heart leaving behind him only that mangled portrait and that +ominous bottle on the desk! Where had he gone, and when should she see +him again? +</P> + +<P> +Just across the way a knot of people was gathering in front of a +newspaper bulletin-board whereon a great white sheet was being pasted, +and her gaze—first mechanically, then with a start of shrinking +comprehension—read the staring headlines that had been roughly +lettered upon it: +</P> + +<BR> + +<P CLASS="t3"> +CAMERON CRAIG SHOT DOWN BY BURGLAR<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="t4"> +DESPERATE MIDNIGHT ENCOUNTER IN FINANCIER'S LIBRARY<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="t4"> +WOUNDED MAN UNCONSCIOUS BUT STILL ALIVE<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="t4"> +MYSTERIOUS WOMAN INVOLVED<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Cameron Craig was not dead! If he lived, he must one day learn that +the letters were gone from the safe. Would he not then connect her +with their disappearance? What would he do? She was aware, unhappily, +to what lengths he was capable of going! Even though the letters were +not his, would he accuse her of stealing them—<I>her</I>? +</P> + +<P> +As she drove away the last two lines seemed to imprint themselves on +her eyeballs in monstrous symbols of flame. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap24"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XXIV +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +THE WOMAN WHO KNEW +</H4> + +<P> +June came with its gold-born days, its passionate bird-songs and scents +of roses, its shimmer of willow and pine and burnished lustre of +down-bent holly-leaves and its evening mists wreathing the tall garden +shrubs like wedding-veils. But the beauty and passion of the throbbing +season came to Echo with a sense of mockery. +</P> + +<P> +The night of her return she had carried out her plan as regarded the +letters and her father had believed the package had arrived with his +mail. When a little later he had told her that Cameron Craig had sent +him the letter whose publication had been threatened, years had seemed +fallen from his shoulders. She had been content that he should deem +the act significant of the other's better nature emerging from the +slough of an ignoble temptation—satisfied to know that in his mind the +fact that it should have been one of the last acts Craig had performed +before the tragedy, had invested it with a quality of the fateful and +foreordained. Her own thought was absorbed with other things. +</P> + +<P> +She had read avidly, though with unspeakable dread and loathing, the +newspaper accounts of the affair. The refusal of the arrested man to +tell his name or where he came from, or to explain in the slightest +detail—except brazenly to deny any part in it—the crime which had set +the city in which it had occurred agog, had been duly chronicled; but +the condition of the victim—since Cameron Craig was a power in the +community—had absorbed a greater part of the popular interest, and the +daily bulletins of his physicians had called forth far more comment +than the unknown criminal whom he had identified as the man who had +shot him. She had felt a great relief, also, in the knowledge that +Craig had declared that he had not known his feminine visitor; and +while the dread had inevitably lifted that when he discovered the loss +of the letters he might betray her, it had faded at length in the +certainty that, though he lived, the brain-injury had left him with +clouded consciousness. Day after day he had lain voiceless, the outer +injury gradually and surely yielding to the medicaments of healing, but +the brain lapsed into a semblance of vacuity, inert and unresponsive, a +mild phantom of the old Craig, the bodily functions become mere +mechanism, the mind blank and fallow, its inner hurt waiting a +diagnosis beyond the skill of local practitioners. +</P> + +<P> +But though the secret Echo carried shut within her breast thus grew +less painful with the passage of time, another dread was slowly drawing +out of her heart its warmth and glow. This was the deeper hurt of +Harry Sevier's absence. +</P> + +<P> +Going about her daily affairs she thought of him without ceasing. She +never drove through the streets that her gaze did not search the busy +pavements—never passed the building that held his office that her eyes +did not lift fearfully to its blank and blinded windows—never heard +the postman's brisk step on the porch that her heart did not beat +chokingly. Where had he gone? Chilly knew of no one who had received +a letter from him. Aunt Judy, his cook, was as ignorant as she. She +had even interviewed Suzuki, but it had been plain that the Japanese +could tell nothing. +</P> + +<P> +The recollection of the bottle and the overturned glass she had seen in +his office recurred to her again and again, with all their bitter +suggestions of surrender, relapse and demoralisation. Could it be that +he had thrown away his hard-earned victory, hurled himself again into +the pit from which he had so painfully climbed, which now might hold +him forever? And coupled with this sickening thought came the +reflection: what if Harry should die, far away somewhere, perhaps in +some foreign country, without seeing her again, without ever knowing? +There were hours, too, when, woman-like, she wondered whether he had +cared so much: whether he had not found comfort in absence and given +his love elsewhere. +</P> + +<P> +Her cheeks grew paler day by day, and in spite of herself her step +lagged and lassitude grew upon her. Often she felt her father's +anxious look and knew that her mother, in her stately and +undemonstrative way was deeply disturbed. She took without protest the +tonics Doctor Southall prescribed, but they brought little betterment, +and, as physicians will, he at length began to talk of a sea-trip. In +her growing apathy plans of this sort meant nothing to Echo, but she +believed Harry had gone abroad, and the chance that they might meet, +however slender it might be, called to her. When Mrs. Spottiswoode, +therefore, announced her annual migration to Paris for her winter's +wardrobe, it was arranged that Echo should make the voyage under her +chaperonage. +</P> + +<P> +Meanwhile the date had arrived for Echo's usual summer's visit to Nancy +Langham in the neighbouring capital. Ordinarily a stay at the home of +the girl of whom she was so fond, would have been something to look +forward to with unmixed delight. Now, however, it had become a thing +to shrink from. To walk those streets—perhaps to see again the house +whose very memory had been such an anguish to her—she would gladly +have evaded this. But when Nancy's letters promised to pass from +pleading to epistolary tears, she at length yielded and late August +found her the Langhams' guest for a final weekend. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +As she dressed, on the afternoon of her arrival, there was a tap at the +door and Nancy's voice said, "May I come in, dear? I want to see what +you are going to wear." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, come in. I'm almost ready." +</P> + +<P> +Echo had chosen a gown of black <I>tulle</I> with a gold rose at the +brocaded girdle and Nancy looked at her admiringly. "Gracious!" she +exclaimed. "That black—it positively sets your hair on <I>fire</I>! It +makes you so pale, though. Do put a little dab of pink on your cheeks, +Echo; you make me look positively lurid beside you!" +</P> + +<P> +There was some truth in the comparison, for the younger girl was like a +wild-rose, quivering with life and colour. She took the hare's-foot +and came to Echo coaxingly. "Just a little tinge ... like that. +There! Now you are just perfect." +</P> + +<P> +"Who's coming to tea, Nancy?" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, only a handful—Mrs. Moncure. You met her last year—and Mr. +Meredith: he's the District Attorney—and the Shirley boys: they're +very young and College-y—and five or six others. I only asked a few." +</P> + +<P> +The Shirleys were first to appear and were followed by Mrs. Moncure, a +mellow, winy woman with a white gown that smacked of the <I>Rue de la +Paix</I>, and a complexion exquisitely made up. She greeted Nancy with a +smiling graciousness, nodded to the gentlemen, and sat down on the sofa +beside Echo. +</P> + +<P> +"It was so sweet of Nancy to ask me to come," she said. "I've never +had half a chance to chat with you before, though we met last year at a +particularly stupid reception or something. This is so much more +home-y, isn't it?" She dropped into smalltalk, rippling and charming, +while Nancy poured the tea, and when Mr. Meredith presently arrived she +presented him. +</P> + +<P> +"Our District Attorney," she announced. "The Terror of the Lawless!" +</P> + +<P> +"Now don't tell me I look a terror!" said he, beseechingly to Echo. +"I'm a most mild-mannered man in private life, am I not, Mrs. Moncure?" +</P> + +<P> +"I'm not sure yet whether I can give you a character," she answered. +"I haven't seen this year's subscription-list to my pet charity." +</P> + +<P> +"Blackmail!" the other asserted indignantly. "I'll subpoena you all as +witnesses. And this is how I am treated for protecting you from +criminality!" +</P> + +<P> +"I like <I>that</I>!" exclaimed Nancy wickedly. "When burglars hide in our +alcoves and jump out and shoot us when we're not looking! Poor Mr. +Craig! <I>I</I> think you ought to be impeached, or impounded, or whatever +they call it." +</P> + +<P> +He laughed. "You know of the Craig affair, of course, Miss Allen," he +said, turning. +</P> + +<P> +Echo was glad for the touch of rouge on her cheeks. "Yes," she +answered. "Oh, yes." Her gaze was on the basket of tulips on the +tea-table, but she was really seeing Craig's smouldering black +eyes—the lowering brows—the ruthless clamped lips—as she had seen +his face in that moment of revealment in his study. +</P> + +<P> +"The trial of the man who shot him opened to-day," continued Meredith. +He looked again at Nancy. "It's up to the police to prevent +burglaries, you see. My part comes after the burglars are caught. I +point the moral—as a deterrent to others still at large." +</P> + +<P> +"I hope, then," said Mrs. Moncure, "that the moral will be well pointed +in this case. I didn't sleep for a week after it happened." +</P> + +<P> +"I shall certainly try to get him the limit," declared the attorney. +"It'll be a long time before you need fear another midnight call from +him, Miss Langham. While you are at the matinée to-morrow, please +remember that I am vociferating frantically at the jury in your behalf. +I surely deserve a cup of tea for that, don't I?" +</P> + +<P> +"Well, on consideration, perhaps you do," asserted Nancy judicially, as +she poured. "I'll relent." +</P> + +<P> +She sat smiling, her dainty hand on the old silver urn, not observing +how the smile had been stricken from Echo's face. Meredith noted the +latter's strained look, however, and said, as he seated himself, "You +mustn't think we are prone to such melodramatics. We don't have them +often. This case is somewhat peculiar from the fact that the police +can't identify the man we are trying. We don't know who he is or what +is his record. For of course he has one." +</P> + +<P> +"But," interposed Mrs. Moncure, "I thought criminals were always +photographed—don't they call it the 'Rogues' Gallery'?—and measured, +so they <I>could</I> be identified." +</P> + +<P> +"My dear lady," he replied, "for two years I've been trying to bring +this city up to date in that very thing. The state has the Bertillon +system, but it's in use only in the penitentiary, as a permanent +record. The data, however, should be taken when a criminal is +arrested, and there ought to be a system of exchange of these records +with all penal institutions. There would be no temptation then to turn +a bare-faced burglary, coupled with felonious assault, into a romantic +mystery, as this man's counsel, my friend, Mason, judging from the line +he took to-day, will try to do." +</P> + +<P> +There was a pause, as he possessed himself of another scone. +</P> + +<P> +"I wonder," said Mrs. Moncure, presently, "if we shall ever know who +she was—the woman who was with Craig when he was shot." +</P> + +<P> +Meredith laughed a little. "I imagine it's not likely," he returned. +"He has declared once that he didn't know her, and we can all +understand her own passionate reticence on the subject!" +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Moncure smiled as she rose. +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +"Oh Sin! Oh Sorrow! and Oh Womankind! (she quoted)<BR> + How can you do such things and keep your fame,<BR> +Unless this world, and t'other too, be blind?<BR> + Nothing so dear as an unfilched good name!"<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +For Echo the smiling words were barbed and winged with a painful +significance. Again and again, as she chatted mechanically over the +tea-cups, they came back to her, coupled with the memory of the stories +she had heard of Craig—the whispered allusions made with shrugs and +lifted eye-brows. +</P> + +<P> +As she lay in bed that night, she felt her hot cheeks flush through the +darkness. Could the world think that of her—if it knew? +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap25"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XXV +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +ON TRIAL +</H4> + +<P> +The painful suggestions that had come to Echo over the teacups +possessed her next day, when she drove with Nancy in the morning and in +the afternoon, alone, selected her final steamer purchases—for she had +made her farewells at home and was to go next day directly to New York, +meeting Mrs. Spottiswoode on board the steamer. She was restless and +uneasy and the thought of the trial proceeding at the court-house that +day obsessed her. Here she was, she, Echo Allen, save for the escaped +marauders themselves, the only one who had witnessed the deed whose +imagined details the law was now laboriously reconstructing only a +block away. +</P> + +<P> +The thought brought a burning self-consciousness which began to be +threaded by a fearful curiosity. She was feeling the repellent +fascination that the scene of a hazardous episode ever after possesses +for the secret actor in it. +</P> + +<P> +Instinctively the lode-stone had drawn her steps to Court House Square. +She looked across at the broad, open doorway. Why not go in? She had +attended trials at home. She could find a place in the rear where she +would be unobserved. For an instant the thought crossed her mind that +the prisoner might recognise her, but then she remembered that on that +night at Craig's house she had worn a light veil. +</P> + +<P> +She crossed the square quickly, and with sudden decision went up the +steps and into the building. An usher sat on a stool by a door that +stood ajar and before she knew it he had pushed it open and she found +herself in the court-room. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +In that room, unguessed by all who had watched and listened during the +dragging trial that was now rushing swiftly to end, weird forces had +been contending. In touch with the old, familiar things, but with a +high-coloured unnaturalness, Harry Sevier had stood ceaseless guard +over his secret, every sense and instinct on the <I>qui vive</I> to minimise +the chances of recognition. +</P> + +<P> +The night of his arrest, as he lay sleepless in his police-cell, he had +thought out certain obvious details of the game he intended to play and +had lost no time in putting them into practice. He had worn his waving +hair, rather long; during his detention he reversed this habit and +instead of its customary parting, brushed it straight back from his +forehead. Later he took stock of personal mannerisms and altered by +unrelaxing watchfulness and determination the natural register of his +voice. Always his mind had retained the sense of fate that had come to +him when he sat in the alcove with Paddy the Brick's pistol clapped to +his temple. Drink had driven him to that strange journey that had +ended in tragedy, but had it not been, nevertheless, some over-ruling +design that had brought him to Craig's house, where the unbelievable +accident of his presence had saved Echo? But for that, she would now +be Craig's wife, or the centre of a wretched scandal. If he held his +course, and played his cards as they fell, perhaps fate would guide him +still! So far the gipsy ring had brought him luck, he thought +whimsically, and he had kept it on his finger. +</P> + +<P> +But withal, it had been a straining interval. There had been, first, +the fear that Craig would die, casting its grisly shadow across the +floor; and this had woven with the dread, that never lessened, of the +moment when he should recover consciousness. The first morning's +newspapers had made a feature of Craig's assertion that he did not know +the woman who had awaited his coming in his library; but Harry held in +his mind the certainty that his own recognition must inevitably result +in Echo's involvement. +</P> + +<P> +He had adopted his course of silence because it was the only one open +to him at the moment, but the event had justified his choice. It was +the unexpected that had happened. The time-limit of the law which +bounds murder had passed, and Craig was still alive. Nor had he +recovered consciousness. But even with these assurances, Harry had had +hourly to fight with the dread of some accidental confrontation which +should pierce the screen and this dread had infinitely increased with +the opening of the trial, when he became perforce the cynosure of +hundreds of curious eyes. +</P> + +<P> +But here also fate had been kind. It was now the second day of the +proceedings, for Harry's personal qualities, no less than his strange +pertinacity, had roused a keen professional interest in the attorney +who had been assigned to defend him, and the latter had made a fight +which his client, whose legal experience judged the outcome certain, +would gladly have exchanged for the inept blunderings of the veriest +tyro. +</P> + +<P> +However, no chance encounter had betrayed him and as the District +Attorney rose for his final clinching of the nail of evidence, Harry +had felt a great relief that the ordeal was so nearly finished. +</P> + +<P> +Almost the great danger was past! With his conviction and the passing +of sentence upon him, the Judicial arm of the law would have delivered +him to the Executive. Danger of publicity would be over, and Echo +might be told the truth, without danger of recoil upon herself. A +thousand times in his cell he had wondered how he should accomplish +this. In some way it could be brought about—some safe and secret +way—just how he would have leisure to decide. No one, not even Mason, +his counsel, need be trusted with the significant secret that had such +power to blast. She must be well instructed so that no false step +could mar his plan. She must take no one into her confidence—must +tell her story privately to the Governor, who had known her from her +childhood. He was a just and discreet man and Harry did not doubt the +outcome. His own story could supplement hers, and after a sufficient +interval, executive pardon would quietly release him. He could step +back into his old niche, and all would be as before. Even if Craig +recovered, he would be powerless, since an accusation could not lie +against a pardoned man, and Craig would not bring a charge that was at +once bootless and incredible. Nor would he wreak an empty revenge upon +Echo. He had once declared that he had not known the woman in the +library, and, since she was lost to him in any case, he would not +hazard a public reversal of his testimony that all would unite to call +dastardly. The one thing Craig valued which men in the mass could give +him, aside from power and money, was his place in the social sun, and +he would not risk this. In the publication of the letter, or letters, +that would have involved her father, he doubtless would not have been +publicly known; in this matter he would run the gauntlet of popular +southern opinion and would be well aware that the act would damn him. +So Harry told himself. The real story would be buried, and the +world—his world and Echo's—would never know! +</P> + +<P> +Thus he was thinking as he listened dully to the prosecutor's scathing +<I>résumé</I>. His elbow was on the long table by which he sat, his brow in +his hand, shielding his eyes from the sunlight that sent darting arrows +across the cool, dim room as the windowshade waved in the light breeze. +He could not see the door at the rear of the room swing open, nor the +figure of the woman who entered—to pause, momentarily confused in the +quick transition from the sunny Square to the shadow of the interior. +</P> + +<P> +Echo's heart was beating hard as she slipped into a vacant seat next +the aisle, conscious that the man who was speaking was Meredith, whom +she had met at tea the day before, and that he was closing his final +speech for the prosecution. She looked about her, at the jury who +seemed apathetic and a trifle bored, at the Judge who was writing +perfunctorily on the pad before him, and then her gaze slipped, +half-stealthily, to the long table before the bar, where the prisoner +should be sitting. But though she leaned forward to look, she could +not see him for the intervening figures. Then, suddenly, the +deliberate, judicial utterance of the District Attorney caught her +attention. He was rounding to a final period and the meaning of what +he was saying smote through her self-command to the last, inner corner +of her shrinking consciousness and made the room whirl about her: +</P> + +<P> +"The counsel for the defence has attempted to read a romantic meaning +into the obduracy with which this thief and would-be murderer has held +to his policy of silence. He has invited you to believe that this +silence indicates a noble desire to shield a woman's reputation. The +name of a woman who thrusts herself, unexpected and unattended, into a +man's house at dead of night! The name of a woman the innocence of +whose errand is effectually denied by her precipitate flight and her +craven hiding!" +</P> + +<P> +Echo sank back into her seat, breathless. She listened to the brief, +conventional charge, saw the jurors file out, heard the stir and +movement of relaxation sweep over the room, yet she was unconscious of +the lapse of time. The public, open declaration had seemed to set the +final flaming seal upon the incident, voicing, as if with a monster +siren, the shameful meaning! She had cringed at Mrs. Moncure's smiling +innuendo; now the scathing indictment was burning itself on her brain. +"<I>A woman who thrusts herself unexpected and unattended into a man's +house at dead of night!</I>"—the words seemed to stab her over and over +like poisoned daggers. She was that—that woman! She imagined herself +rising in that suffocating room and saying distinctly, "It is I he said +that of—I, Echo Allen!" She saw herself on the witness-stand, heckled +and badgered, faltering an unbelievable story to sceptical ears. There +was rolling over her an overwhelming dread, and her hands had clenched +till the nails struck purple crescents into her palms. +</P> + +<P> +She became aware suddenly that the room had hushed, the jury was +re-entering. She hardly heard the foreman's crisp "Guilty, your +Honour!" She was trembling, there was a scent in her nostrils like the +fumes of poppies, and the room seemed to be swaying to and fro. She +turned away her head, daring to look no longer. +</P> + +<P> +"Prisoner at the bar, stand up!"—the clerk's metallic admonition +seemed to come from far away. She strove to look now, but a swimming +dizziness was upon her and the shadows of the room were turning black. +She had never fainted in her life, and the thought of fainting now +filled her with terror. She rose to her feet, fighting back the +sickness with all her strength, stepped into the aisle, and in a moment +more the fresh outer air, sweet and reviving, struck her quivering face. +</P> + +<P> +Her going had made no stir, had been unnoted, perhaps, by a dozen in +the court-room. She could not guess that in the instant she had risen, +with blank eyes and unsteady feet, the prisoner at the bar had +half-turned and for a breath his gaze had fastened upon her face. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap26"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XXVI +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +THE HAUNTER OF THE SHADOW +</H4> + +<P> +But for the iron control to which he had schooled himself, Sevier, in +that second, must have made a panic movement of betrayal. He dragged +his eyes away instantly, his heart beating as if it must burst, as the +deliberate judicial accents struck across the courtroom: +</P> + +<P> +"I have no desire to say anything to add to your anxiety of mind. The +rulings of the court, if they have had any bias, have not leaned to the +side of the Commonwealth. There is no legal right that has not been +afforded you and if you have not chosen to meet the evidence with +candour it is to be presumed that it is because candour could have lent +no degree of mitigation to the circumstances. The jury has found you +guilty as charged, and I should be doing less than my duty, if I +allowed sympathy based upon imagined facts to subtract from the full +legal penalty. The judgment of this court is, therefore, that you be +imprisoned in the state's penitentiary during a period of twenty years." +</P> + +<P> +Harry hardly heard the pronouncement for the mental confusion that held +him. Echo knew! All the time while he had been fighting back +recognition, she had known! How had she guessed? Had his voice, +perhaps, that night when he had saved her, betrayed him? He remembered +her white and agonised look when he had thrust her from the door of +Craig's house and bade her run. A doubt, coupled with his absence from +home, would have driven her, somehow or other, to discover the truth. +She had been near him often, perhaps, realising the situation, +conscious of what he had been striving for, knowing that only silence +for a time could save them both! In that instant's view he had seen +the look of suffering and sickness in her face. In these long +weeks—if, indeed, she had known it so long—what an anguish of anxiety +she must have been enduring! +</P> + +<P> +As the voice ceased and he sat down, through the warm wave that was +coursing over him, Harry felt a chilling realisation of the risk she +had run in coming there. An impulsive word, an indiscreet look, and +suspicion might have been roused leading to discovery. Sitting before +this bar he was only an unknown criminal, a submerged "John Doe" on +whom the make-shift expediency of the law spent itself. But the veil +once lifted, he would be Harry Sevier, club-man and lawyer whose +pleading folk had once flocked to hear, now caught in the vise of the +law and proven thief and degenerate. +</P> + +<P> +In the emptying room he felt the cool hand of his counsel touch his +own, and followed him—with a watchful deputy-sheriff now in +hand-reach—to a side door that opened into a chamber at the rear of +the court-room. On the threshold the lawyer turned to the sheriff. +</P> + +<P> +"There's no hurry, Jerry," he said peevishly. "You wait out here a few +minutes. The old man himself is coming. He wants to see him." +</P> + +<P> +"Mr. Mason," said Sevier as the other closed the door. "I shall not +pretend to thank you for your interest and kindness." +</P> + +<P> +The man of briefs shrugged his shoulders. "There's nothing to thank me +for," he answered briskly. "Now, if I had cleared you—" +</P> + +<P> +Harry nodded. "Naturally, you couldn't do that. You were at a +disadvantage." +</P> + +<P> +"Thanks to you!" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, I didn't assist you much, I know." +</P> + +<P> +"Didn't help me at all," came back in a growl. +</P> + +<P> +"No doubt you think I might have," said Harry. "But please don't count +me unresponsive. It is only that the logic of the situation appealed +to me as unanswerable. But it is a privilege," he added, with the +glimmer of a smile, "to have been associated with you." +</P> + +<P> +Mason looked at him with a twist to his saturnine lips. "You have been +my most remarkable client," he said. "It would have pleased me to have +gotten you off. But unluckily for you, I'm no Harry Sevier." +</P> + +<P> +It was fortunate that the face of the man beside him was turned away, +or he might have seen it go white and startled. "I'm sure I lost no +chance I might have had," said the other slowly, "even though you're +not Harry Sevier, whoever he is." +</P> + +<P> +The other laughed shortly. "He's a lawyer in the next state. I heard +him plead once. <I>He</I> didn't bother with evidence! He'd clear Judas +Iscariot with that silver tongue of his! Ah, well..." He shrugged his +shoulders again, and turned to a closed door. "I'll see if the old man +is ready." +</P> + +<P> +"One moment." Harry had drawn the ring with the square uncut emerald +from his finger, and now he held it out. "I should consider it a +favour, if you would take this—it has no particular value, I am sorry +to say—as a little remembrance." +</P> + +<P> +Mason turned the ring over in his hands. Under the churlish pose a +guilty flush stole up his lean, eccentric face that betrayed +unmistakably the friendliness and liking he had learned for the man +whose plight angered and whose attitude puzzled him. "Thank you!" he +said, and a sudden smile made the grim demeanour all at once soft and +human. He slipped it on his finger. "Thank you! I shall be proud to +keep it." +</P> + +<P> +He opened the door and Sevier followed him into the room adjoining. +</P> + +<P> +There, looking out of the window, the fingers of one thin hand in his +plenteous blue-grey beard, the other behind him, stood the Governor of +the State. Harry felt a thrill run through him. He knew the older man +by sight, for they had met once casually in the past. Had Echo already +spoken? Did the other know? +</P> + +<P> +"Governor," said the lawyer, "I beg to present my client, whose cause I +have so poorly represented." +</P> + +<P> +In the deep grey, kindly eyes that were studying him attentively, Harry +saw instantly, however, that there was no hidden knowledge, and his +heart, that had leaped quickly, dropped into measured beating. He +bowed. +</P> + +<P> +"My counsel did wonders," he said, "but the day of miracles is past." +</P> + +<P> +The reply was simple enough, but the visitor unconsciously looked his +surprise. He had been prepared for something in a way unusual, for +Mason had employed his intimacy to inspire something of his own keen +interest in his client. Face to face with the latter, the Governor +understood the lawyer's puzzlement. Here was a man who had been +arrested as a house-breaker and who, caught in the very act, had shot a +man down. Yet he found it suddenly credible, as Mason had declared, +that the man was no ordinary burglar, was indeed, or had been, a +gentleman. But there were gentlemen-thieves! He met Harry's tone with +noncommittal courtesy. +</P> + +<P> +"You will not consider this an intrusion, I hope," he said. "My friend +here was anxious that I should see you. He has been deeply concerned +in your case." +</P> + +<P> +"It is a pleasure," Harry replied simply. "He has been put to +considerable pains, in which there is very little credit, I am afraid." +</P> + +<P> +"His interest," the Governor went on, "as he has assured me, arises +from a conviction that there is some hidden element in the affair that, +if it had been brought out, might have put a different face upon it." +</P> + +<P> +Harry bowed but did not answer. +</P> + +<P> +"You have a good reason, I take it, for maintaining the silence as to +yourself which my friend here finds so difficult?" +</P> + +<P> +"The very best," said Harry grimly. +</P> + +<P> +The Governor mused a moment. "You will pardon me, I am sure, if I ask +you one other question. Have you ever been in prison?" +</P> + +<P> +"No," said Harry. +</P> + +<P> +"Have you committed crime—in the past?" +</P> + +<P> +"As the law counts it, no." +</P> + +<P> +He looked the Governor steadily in the eyes as he spoke and the other, +a keen judge of men, with a knowledge, bred of long life and +observation, of the workings of the human conscience, felt a strange +inclination to believe. Yet for every criminal there must be a first +crime. Given a good family name and the remnant of a conscience, the +man's insistence could be accounted for! With a little sigh he turned +to Mason. +</P> + +<P> +"Shall I see you at the Castlemans to-night?" he asked as they shook +hands. +</P> + +<P> +"I'm dining at the Langhams," Mason replied. "It's a farewell dinner +for Miss Allen." +</P> + +<P> +"A charming girl, Echo!" said the Governor. "I've known her since she +was a child. A farewell, did you say? Is her visit over?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, she's off to Europe to-morrow." +</P> + +<P> +The lawyer went with the Governor to the door and stood a moment +looking after him as he crossed the lawn to his carriage. He did not +see the look that had suddenly slipped to the face of the man standing +behind him—a look mingled of sudden wonder and questioning disquiet. +</P> + +<P> +To Europe! Echo? Was she going away now ... knowing it all ... +knowing what he had passed through, what lay before him? Going without +written word or secret sign to him? +</P> + +<P> +Harry felt a strange sinking of the heart. It seemed to him as if a +cold shadow had suddenly fallen across the room—a shadow in which +lurked something vague and formless, something whose existence his +faith denied, yet which stood silently staring at him with a cruel and +terrifying smile. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap27"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XXVII +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +THE END OF THE JOURNEY +</H4> + +<P> +Some miles beyond the skirt of the city, on the dusty highway, stood a +vast wall of stone built four-square, along whose top, seen +breast-high, men in dingy <I>khaki</I> patrolled back and forth with rifles +on their shoulders. Fronting the road was a great barred gate, with an +arched top, set in the wall. This opened on a narrow paved court at +one side of which was a two storied frame building, whose door was +marked with the word "warden." +</P> + +<P> +Before this door the next afternoon Harry Sevier stood with a sheriff. +The latter knocked and a heavy-featured man came out. "Well, Warden," +said the sheriff, "I've brought you another boarder. Here's his +papers." +</P> + +<P> +The other examined the documents, took a fountain-pen from his pocket +and signed one—a form of receipt—and handed it back. "All right," he +said briefly, and rushing open the door, motioned the new arrival to +enter. +</P> + +<P> +When Harry emerged, an hour later, under the care of a uniformed +turn-key, he wore trousers and jacket of coarse fulled cloth with +horizontal stripes of black and yellowish-grey—the badge of the +convict. Under his visored cap his crisp black hair had been clipped +close to the skin. And in the upper office a trusty who acted as clerk +was filling in on an indexed card the physical measurements which, with +the number he wore on a leathern strap about his upper arm, constituted +the formula by which hereafter was to be known the man who had once +been Harry Sevier. +</P> + +<P> +In the centre of the great walled space reared an ancient circular +structure of brick. It was like a huge bee-hive. His conductor led +Harry to a compartment on the lower tier and unlocked an iron door. +"This is yours, 239," he said. +</P> + +<P> +Harry entered. He heard the door clang behind him and the footsteps +retire down the stone corridor. The light from a barred window struck +full into his eyes and for a moment he did not see that another figure, +in the same dingy stripes, sat on the edge of the narrow bunk, looking +at him out of small, red-rimmed eyes. +</P> + +<P> +The occupant rose slowly, thrusting a grimy hand through a shock of +sand-coloured hair, and stared hard at the newcomer. Then he uttered a +howl of evil mirth and recognition. +</P> + +<P> +"Smoke of the devil!" he shouted. "If it ain't the youngster me and +Towler had behind the portiary! Ho-ho! I saw by the papers they'd +nabbed you. And to think the geezer swore it was you that plugged him! +They didn't get me—not that time! I'd be out still if I hadn't tried +to lift a reticule on a street-car. It was my record that did it for +me then. Well, we're pals now, old horse, and we'll celebrate it +right!" +</P> + +<P> +He thrust his arm beneath the rough blanket, brought out a flask, and +uncorked it with his teeth. +</P> + +<P> +"It's the real stuff," he said. "Towler slips it to me—good old pal! +He's got one of the guards 'fixed'! Here—drink hearty!" With a +hoarse laugh he thrust it into Harry's face. +</P> + +<P> +Harry's eyes had been fixed on his with a curious intensity. In that +startling moment, as the fumes of the liquor penetrated his nostrils, a +lurid sequence had flashed to him. This man he had once betrayed by a +base surrender to appetite; now in antic irony, it was this man's crime +that had betrayed him, Harry Sevier, to the same dilemma and a like +shameful penalty. And here was dangled before him the hideous badge +and symbol of his downfall! +</P> + +<P> +He seized the wrist of the outstretched hand with a grasp like steel, +and the flask smashed against the bars of the window. Then he hurled +the other from him across the narrow cell. +</P> + +<P> +His cell-mate clung to the bunk across which he had fallen, and stared +at Harry with a look of slow malevolence. He licked his lips. +</P> + +<P> +"I'll fix you for that!" he said. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap28"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XXVIII +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +THE MAN IN THE WHEELED CHAIR +</H4> + +<P> +Echo sat under the Botticelli blue of a perfect afternoon on the +terrace of the Hotel Splendid in Nice. Through the hot, bright air, +set in the purple creases of the hazeless hills, she could see tinted +villas drowsing in golden gardens aflame with flowers, and below under +the dizzying sunlight beyond the long esplanade, tiny swells spilled +over the pearly beech like molten sapphire. +</P> + +<P> +The past months had been packed with new sights and sounds. There had +been the ocean passage, with all the gaiety that mill-pond weather and +a total absence of <I>mal de mer</I> evokes, a leisurely motor trip through +the northern counties of England, shopping and theatre-going in Paris, +and then a final fortnight on the Riviera. From the first day at sea, +when the dimming shores of home had slipped away into the vaporous +distance across the swinging, grey-green heave, Echo had thrown herself +eagerly into the new experiences. It had seemed to her at first as +though she was leaving behind all her pain and problem and flying +whither the dogging ghosts could not follow. From time to time she +felt a wave of that shame that had overwhelmed her as she sat in the +court-room. When she reflected, she felt astonishment at her own +temerity—at the morbid curiosity which had impelled her to witness the +rehearsal of an episode whose very memory thrilled her with pain and +dread. But at length this, too, had faded. She had told herself that +Harry would have returned before her and that all would again be well +between them. With all her power she had striven to thrust the pain +and apprehension from the mind and amid new and varying scenes she had +partially succeeded. +</P> + +<P> +But though the acute strain and distress, the piteous terror had +dulled, her heart ached always with its burden, and there were many +times when all of Mrs. Spottiswoode's effervescent moods could not call +forth response. Across the fairest scenes the ghosts, uncalled, would +thrust themselves, and in her brain a mocking voice would whisper— +</P> + +<P> +"You will never tell him! You will never dare! There will always be a +secret between you! You will be deceiving him—all your life. For if +you told him the truth—the whole truth—would he believe you? The +letters for which you made that visit, even if you could show them, are +ashes now. And even if he believed in the necessity that drove you to +win them from Craig, what might he imagine had been the price! You +know what the world would think: you heard it in the court-room. He +would think the same thing! You were in Craig's house, alone, that +midnight—and you will never dare tell him! Can you say to him, 'It +was <I>I</I> who was in Cameron Craig's library! <I>I</I> was the mysterious +woman the police were searching for—<I>I</I> whom you love!'?" +</P> + +<P> +The sneering voices were whispering in her ear to-night, as she sat +looking out across the blended harmonies of sky and sea, her wistful +face bent beneath the soft halo of her hair. +</P> + +<P> +There welled up in her with fresh force the aching resentment, the sick +anger and rebellion against the sardonic fate that had so enmeshed her. +Why should Craig have ever seen and desired her? Why should his fancy +not have fallen upon some other woman? Yet, had that been so, her +father's name would have been ruined! That, at least, had not +befallen. If only she had not written that note to Harry! So she +reflected, not knowing that that fateful note itself had been the key +to another series of incidents which had in fact wrought for her +salvation—so curiously interwoven is the mystic fabric that man calls +chance. By that note, she told herself, she had thrust his love from +her. Would anything less than the whole truth bring it back? And in +any case, if she did not tell him the whole, would she ever be safe in +that love? For Craig could betray her if he regained his faculties. A +single word could overwhelm her. There was that lost night when she +had been believed to be at her aunt's—a dropped stitch in time's weave +which might unravel the whole! If he recovered Craig would hold her +happiness in his grasp as surely as he had once held her father's +honour. +</P> + +<P> +The cogent reasons that had influenced Harry in his speculation on the +same subject had been based on his keen masculine observation and +familiarity with Craig's type; Echo had only her knowledge of his +relentless passion and lack of scruple, and her instinct was clouded by +long anxiety and fear. She had lately striven to banish from her mind +the idea that he might recover, but to-night it was upon her with +strange force. A baleful thought thrust itself into her mind, an +incarnate temptation: <I>If Craig would only die</I>! As it came to her she +felt her face blush, and she shrank, feeling that a wicked thing had +found lodgment in her soul; but it came again and again. +</P> + +<P> +A little group of people who had arrived that morning had issued from +the dining-room and now were seated about one of the small tables on +the terrace drinking their coffee—two men, one elderly, one younger, a +handsome woman and a girl. They continued the conversation begun +inside—evidently a discussion of some one who had been on the train. +All at once the lady touched the speaker beside her on the arm. +</P> + +<P> +"Hush!" she cautioned. "There he is now!" +</P> + +<P> +The voices stilled. Glancing around Echo saw that a wheeled-chair was +being pushed onto the far end of the terrace. A man sat in it, huddled +in a steamer-rug. +</P> + +<P> +"Is he married?" asked the lady, after a pause. +</P> + +<P> +"No," replied the elderly man. "He has no family or near relatives. +The men with him are a nurse and a secretary. They say he is very +rich." +</P> + +<P> +"Poor fellow!" she exclaimed. "What a dreadful thing! Death is +immensely preferable, of course, to life under such conditions. Where +are they taking him?" +</P> + +<P> +"To Hungary, I believe. There's a celebrated authority on +brain-surgery in Buda-Pesth. The surgeons think it's pressure on some +nerve-centre, and the case calls for the particular operation that is +this chap's specialty. It's a forlorn hope, I imagine." +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know," said the younger man, lighting a cigarette. "They do +marvellous things nowadays. And anyway, if it fails, it can't be any +worse for the patient. As it is, he has no mind at all—no speech, no +memory, nothing!" +</P> + +<P> +Echo turned her head; there was a fierce little smile on her lips. So +here was another! Had he, too, like the one of whom she had been +thinking, been overtaken by a righteous Nemesis in the moment of evil +triumph? And somewhere, perhaps, was there a woman to whom his death +would be a gladness and a relief? +</P> + +<P> +The lady looked toward the wheeled-chair. "How was the injury caused?" +she asked interestedly. +</P> + +<P> +"He was shot," said the elderly man. "Shot by a burglar. I remember +reading of it in the newspapers at the time." +</P> + +<P> +Echo started. A little tremor ran over her. The scarf she held +slipped from her hand. +</P> + +<P> +"It seems a pity sometimes," went on the voice, "that the law must +graduate its penalties so nicely. Here is a man who, to all intents +and purposes, was murdered. If he doesn't recover, his is a living +death. Yet because he continues to breathe, the most that can be given +to the scoundrel who shot him is a term of imprisonment. He ought to +have been hanged!" +</P> + +<P> +The girl beside her pushed back her chair petulantly. "Oh, let's <I>do</I> +something!" she cried. "I want to get him out of my mind. I sat where +I had to look at him in the train all day. It's too horrible! Fancy +having to be like that, not being able to walk or talk or even to feed +one's self! I want to go to the Casino and see something <I>funny</I>!" +</P> + +<P> +</P> + +<P> +When the sound of their voices had died away in the corridor, Echo rose +from her seat and walked along the terrace, quite to the end, where +stood the wheeled-chair. On a bench near by an attendant was immersed +in a newspaper. +</P> + +<P> +Then she turned and looked at the pallid, vacuous face above the +steamer-rug. +</P> + +<P> +Yes—it was Cameron Craig. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap29"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XXIX +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +THE LONE BATTLE +</H4> + +<P> +During those months Harry's visible life had been turning in an endless +cycle of new-gained habit that ruled with vicious and numbing precision +the huge conglomerate of which he was but a single atom—a bitter, +dragging treadmill in which he was constrained to tramp steadily round +and round with the hands of the clock, marking time, as it were, in a +painful void that changed with mocking reverberations. +</P> + +<P> +The spectre that had smiled its cruel smile at him from the shadow in +the little chamber back of the court-room had never left him. He had +thrust it from him with all his strength, but it had come again and +again to chuckle through the darkness. +</P> + +<P> +"She!" it had sneered. "She for whom you risked and suffered so much! +She whose fine courage you counted on—who you dreamed would rush to +your defence, at any cost to herself! You need not have been afraid. +She would have risked nothing. She cared for you—yes. But she cares +a thousand times more for her place in the world's opinion. Why, she +would have married Craig—<I>married</I> him!—rather than face a reflected +shame from a story affecting her father. So much reputation means to +her! Here you are in your stripes, a convict, and <I>she knows it</I>! She +knew all along! She doesn't guess you saw her in the court-room: she +didn't mean you to, of course. How she must have suffered from fear +that you would drag her into it! No doubt she is afraid you may repent +and call on her now to help you. Perhaps that is why she has gone +abroad. That is the real Echo Allen! That is the woman you have +loved!" +</P> + +<P> +Should he call to her now, when she had left him to this suffering, +giving him no little word of trust or gratitude? A painful fiery pride +rose up in him. Not if his flesh was torn by red-hot pincers! Not in +endless years, though every day were a separate hell, till he died! +Never—never—never! +</P> + +<P> +Seared by pride, tortured by despair, with the black agony of doubt +clinging to him like a coat-of-mail, memory dragged him backward +through infernos of suffering, thrusting its searching fingers into +each cranny of his mind, mocking him with shifting pictures cruelly +incongruous, that like a <I>camera obscura</I> turned and turned about a +single focus—a grey old porch with Echo's figure leaning against a +pillar and he looking up into her face. As though he had been a +separate entity he saw himself moving through a thousand significant +scenes of the flame-swept past—the long-gone, dead and buried yet +living past—with her! And across these flitting outlines there +stamped itself the forbidding legend that his ghostly guide showed +Dante.... <I>Lasciate Ogni speranza</I>! By his own choice he had opened a +bottomless chasm between the then and now, between the Harry Sevier he +had been and the nameless convict branded by the righteous law, and +this chasm was impassible and enduring. Ten years of oblivion, of +loathsome existence under a number, of comradeship with felons, an +interminable blank unlighted by one glimpse of joy! Years in which, at +home, the mystery of his disappearance would pass from a +nine-days'-wonder to a diminishing speculation, a vague curiosity, and +at length to forgetfulness. His life, with its multiple ambitions, its +hopes and strivings—its love—had been spilled like water into sand; +there remained only the useless vessel, empty and dishonoured. +</P> + +<P> +Time and again he experienced abrupt lapses into the blackest pit of +despair, when he grappled with an aching desire to be quit of the +puzzle of life, and by any one of a dozen means which lay at his hand, +to leap into freedom. But there was in him something deep-lying and +adamantine which forbade this solution. +</P> + +<P> +Meanwhile time, after a fashion, went on. He breathed, ate and slept; +he saw the dawn look in at his narrow window and the silken blue dusk +drawn across its bars; his hands automatically performed mechanical +tasks, as did the hundreds of others about him; and gradually, out of +the very iteration of these homely things grew a passive equanimity, +destitute of human comfort yet bringing with it a kind of numb +acquiescence in which, though all unconsciously, his feet were feeling +for new foot-hold on the submerged highway of life. And at length +normal feeling, though dazed and bewildered, crept again to the +surface; he was once more conscious of the sun and air, of the scent of +green growing things that the breeze now and then wafted over the +masonry, of the grey pigeons that pecked crumbs in the court-yard, and +of the multitudinous human life that throbbed about him. +</P> + +<P> +In all these months Paddy the Brick had been his cell-mate. By day in +the shop, that rumbled with the clacking din of the tireless +shoe-machines, they were separated. But they marched shoulder to +breast in the loathed lock-step, they sat side by side at dinner and +supper, and the iron bunks on which they slept—Harry on the upper +one—were but a few feet apart. During the first days, while they were +together in the cell, the other had watched him glumly and +suspiciously, speaking only when he must and then morosely, so that +Harry had wondered dully whether that whirl of rage in which he had +smashed the flask of whisky against the window-bars had not further +embittered his lot by an irreparable enmity. +</P> + +<P> +More than once, by the devious means known to such places, Paddy the +Brick had procured whisky, and this—though he risked offering no more +to his companion but drank it secretly in his bunk at night—had put +Harry through other bitter tests of self-control. For the wilful +license of the day on which he had ceased to be Harry Sevier had +granted fresh and terrible power to the cringing thing that had been +mastered and manacled, and the fight he had fought out in that long +year Harry had had again to renew, and now without the zest of reward. +Again and again, as he sat in his cell, or fed the pungent leathern +strips into the clacking shoe-machines in the shop, without warning the +demon of thirst had swooped upon him, making his dry throat ache with +uncontrollable longing, his palms tingle with itching desire: and at +times, when he awoke gasping with the reeking fumes in his nostrils, +and heard the gurgle of the liquor in the dark, he had fought with a +strenuous desire to fling himself bodily upon his companion and snatch +the drink to his own arid lips—fought till the struggle turned him +faint with anger, disgust and self-contempt. +</P> + +<P> +What lent him in these bitter months the strength for this unequal +struggle? Most of all the knowledge that the appetite which he now +grappled with in himself, was the patron Genius of that house of Pain. +He had learned it from his fellows there, in whose faces alcohol had +set its recognisable marks, its baleful brands of ownership. He knew +it from a score of dismal histories related by his incorrigible +cell-mate, daily allusions, the famished eagerness with which the +surreptitious flask was passed from hand to hand. The Spirit of Drink +had seemed to him at length to sprawl, a huge, lethargic incubus, over +that tortured congeries of crime. Till slowly, very slowly—as human +feeling had earlier come to him out of his blankness and torpor—there +had dawned in him a mute consciousness of a victory over himself that +was to be enduring. The conquest he had thought he had made in that +first year of studied avoidance had been no true one. Under stress of +anger, grief and resentment, it had fallen in shameful and utter +defeat. The real victory that he knew now, had come to him in that +prison garb, when black despair had sat by his side through long +months—the fruit of a strength born of familiar hand-touch with evil +temptation and a hatred of the tempter. +</P> + +<P> +As time went on, the surly mood of his cell-mate had grown less +difficult, had even softened to a sneering tolerance. +</P> + +<P> +"You're improving!" he said one day with a smirk. "So you're making up +to the Gospel-Sharp, eh?" +</P> + +<P> +It was a Sunday, when the shops were empty and silent, and the long +grey-black serpentine, with its hitching lock-step, had wound to the +Chapel for the weekly platitudes and then back to the clammy, wintry +dormitory, to drop its human links at their numbered cells. That day +for the first time, the plodding, oleaginous chaplain had noted the new +figure in the stolid ranks and had stopped to speak to him—a +commonplace to which Harry had responded with a mere word. +</P> + +<P> +"You'd better make up to the Warden!" Paddy the Brick continued. "He's +the cock-of-the-walk here. I'd like to smash that oily face of his!" +</P> + +<P> +"I've nothing against him," replied Harry evenly. "He does what he's +here to do." +</P> + +<P> +"He'd better keep his nose in his office," said the other darkly. +"He'll walk through the shops once too often! I know a man around the +corner who'd give his neck to 'get' him—he's a lifer, and nothing +makes much difference to him!" +</P> + +<P> +He crossed the narrow cell as he spoke, and sitting on one of the +three-legged stools that constituted the cell's only movable furniture, +took a bent tin spoon from under his jacket and began to tap upon the +wall. Harry had sometimes seen him at this occupation—a kind of crude +signalling he had thought it. Now, however, some rhythm in the sound +caught him, reminding him of the click of the keys in a telegraph +office. "What is that you are doing?" he asked, as the other stopped. +</P> + +<P> +"Doing?" Paddy the Brick turned his narrow eyes over his shoulder. +"I've been having a chat with an old pal of mine in the upper tier. +That's what." +</P> + +<P> +"Talking?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes. It's the prison-wireless. Didn't you ever hear of that?" +</P> + +<P> +"No." +</P> + +<P> +The other rose and pulled away the blanket from the foot of his bunk. +There in the whitewashed wall was a double row of minute scratches. +"That's the alphabet," he said. "It's mighty handy—we work it by +relay. I can call up any cell on this side in fifteen minutes. Better +learn it," he added jeeringly. "You'll have plenty of time!" +</P> + +<P> +Harry's gaze turned back to the little barred window with its meagre +square of blue. The time he had been there was to be measured only by +months, yet how century-long had dragged the leaden-footed procession! +His painful reverie was broken by Paddy the Brick's voice, jarring and +malicious: +</P> + +<P> +"Ever read the Bible?" +</P> + +<P> +The other had taken the small dingy volume—the sole book the place +afforded—from its shelf, and was lying on his back on his bunk, his +eyes peering over its rim. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," answered Harry, slowly. "Why?" +</P> + +<P> +"I've found one good thing in it: '<I>Woe unto you also, ye lawyers! for +ye lade men with burdens grievous to be borne.</I>' Ho-ho!" he chuckled. +"Reckon I'll ask old Coffin-Face to preach on it next Sunday in Chapel. +I'd sure enjoy it. I had a lawyer once—<I>damn</I> him!" +</P> + +<P> +The flare of evil passion in the closing epithet seemed to Harry like a +wicked spurt of flame from some sudden crack in cooling lava, leaping +out to sear him. His face was turned away—toward the little square of +barred window—and his voice was hoarser than usual, as he asked: +</P> + +<P> +"Why do you hate him so?" +</P> + +<P> +Paddy the Brick hurled the Bible into the corner with an imprecation. +He rose to a sitting posture, his features working. +</P> + +<P> +"Because he did it for me!" he said. "He might have cleared me ... and +he didn't try. And I never took the money they said I stole—never, so +help me! It was a put-up job. They 'planted' the stuff on me, when I +was drunk. It was a pay-day and I knew they were up to something, for +they'd sworn they'd drive me out of the logging-camp—and yet I hadn't +sense enough to keep sober!" He gave a harsh and bitter laugh, and his +voice rose. "But it was my lawyer friend that really did the business! +He was a dead swell—one of your la-de-das with money and +automobiles—that played at lawyering. They told me he was a great man +and I was fool enough to believe them. What did he care for my +case—it was a little one to him! I was nothing but a lumberjack! Why +should he soil his kid gloves with me?" +</P> + +<P> +He turned to Harry's white face a livid countenance. "So now I'm +here," he finished, "and I don't give a rip if I am, either!" +</P> + +<P> +"<I>Woe unto you also, ye lawyers!</I>" Parallel with the wholesale +indictment another text in that self-same book was flashing through +Harry's mind: "<I>For with what judgment ye judge ye shall be judged, and +with what measure ye mete it shall be measured to you again.</I>" Was +that, after all, no trite generality applicable to a hypothetical +hereafter, but a thing true in the minute and multinomial affairs of +the present? Did chance, or fate—or whatever the human mind called +the great <I>Deus ex Machinâ</I>—watch somewhere, with hand upon the lever, +adjusting the nice balance to the subtle requirements of some occult +law of retribution that, though hidden, was yet as certain as +gravitation? +</P> + +<P> +As Harry saw the reddened eyes glowing with hatred, the curving +fingers, the crouching figure, he said to himself, "This is my +work—mine and whisky's. He was a simple woodman who laboured six days +of the week and on the seventh traded half his wages for 'moonshine' +from some illicit mountain still. Whisky set his feet in the toils, +yet but for me he might have lived there forever in the timber, +treading his narrow groove like a blind horse on a ferry, not one whit +worse than his fellows, with no agonised conscience, a simple product +of his environment. But I—and whisky—fastened the bonds upon him. I +did it. I sent him here. I gave him hatred of society, the warfare +that has already marked him with the mark of the beast. This is what I +did. And now I am plucked up from my place and planted here beside +him, as soiled in the eyes of the world as he! Is it because I was the +instrument of his demoralisation that the tables have now been +turned?—because he who takes the sword shall perish by the sword? And +in the last great evening-up, is it written that I shall become even as +he?—that bars and chains shall have their will of me and I emerge at +last, like this incorrigible <I>ruiné</I>, hard, debased, besotted, beyond +hope or redemption in the world?" He shuddered. Better even that that +shot in the library had gone home—that he now lay, innocent as he was, +with the red mark on his throat, down in the horrible quick-lime! +</P> + +<P> +He rose, and with his hands gripping the bars of the open door, drew a +long breath. No! whatever this pent-house did to him, it should never +drag him down! He would take his medicine. For what, in his egregious +folly and egotism, he had done, he would pay—if fate demanded, to the +uttermost farthing. But out of its prison his soul, sometime, should +come unblanched, and unabashed! +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap30"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XXX +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +THE GIPSY RING +</H4> + +<P> +The chill touch of autumn was in the air when the big steamer that +brought Mrs. Spottiswoode and Echo home, crept up the bay to her wharf +in the teeming North River. They arrived at daylight and the early +morning found them safe aboard a Pullman rolling southward. +</P> + +<P> +Looking out across the filmy glory of the October fields and the woods +in their golden regalia epauletted in red, Echo thought of the day she +had sailed away. She had been wretched then, and with all the tonic of +fresh scenes and the savour of change, was she not as wretched now? +For no letter from home had chronicled Harry Sevier's return, and +moreover the knowledge that Craig had been taken half around the world +to test the greatest surgical skill the planet afforded, had made his +recovery, with all it might imply for her, an imminent possibility. +</P> + +<P> +As she followed Mrs. Spottiswoode into the dining-car for luncheon, a +lank, familiar form sprang up from a table. +</P> + +<P> +"Mr. Malcolm!" she cried, and found both her hands instantly swallowed +in a pair of big palms. +</P> + +<P> +He was an extraordinary man, this Thomas Malcolm, whom his intimates +dubbed, affectionately, "Tom." His father had begun life brilliantly, +had begun to make a name and place for himself in professional life, +when he had yielded to the vice of drinking, had speedily sunk himself +in poverty, and had died in some slum corner wretched and unredeemed, +leaving behind him a widow and a boy of ten who, with grim +determination, had set himself to earn a living for both. He had but +just begun to succeed in this when disease, its seeds sown in +privation, took his mother from him. By dint of night-work he had +gained a common-school education and had tutored himself through a +southern university. At twenty-five he had founded an obscure Mission +in the city which had known his father's disgrace, where for thirty +years he had devoted himself to work among the rum-sodden and depraved. +There was none so besotted as to be turned from his door; he was a +familiar figure in the night-court and a welcome weekly visitor at the +Penitentiary, few of whose inmates he did not know personally. At +fifty-five no man was more beloved in the community in which he +laboured, and most of all was he valued and respected by those who knew +his history, and understood how the hatred of liquor had become to the +boy a consuming fire that had driven him to this life of undeviating +self-denial and strenuous conflict with the most sordid of vices. +</P> + +<P> +Looking down at Echo from his great height, gaunt, raw-boned and with a +saturnine twinkle in his cavernous eyes, his homely sallow face +softened to a wonderful smile. "Why!" he said. "It's a monstrous time +since we've met, my dear!" and to Mrs. Spottiswoode—"I saw your names +on the passenger-list in the paper this morning, but I thought New York +would have kept you at least a week." +</P> + +<P> +"Not me!" she returned. "We took in all the new plays in London and +spent all our money in Paris. I've no ambition now above my winter +roses!" She extended her hand to Malcolm's companion. +</P> + +<P> +"How do you do, Mr. Mason? I'm beginning to think you two men are +desperate conspirators. Last year in New York I saw you both together." +</P> + +<P> +Malcolm laughed. "A misguided philanthropist once left a part of his +estate to my Mission, and Mason, here, is the legal executor. <I>Ferbum +sat</I>." +</P> + +<P> +"I hope that is Latin for 'Do sit at our table.' The car is so full, +and I never could ride backward! Thank you, so much!" She sat down +and bent her smart lorgnette upon the menu-card. "What shall we order, +Echo?" +</P> + +<P> +"Anything but the 'fried Chicken, Virginia style,'" said Mason +gloomily. "It's supposed to be what that waiter has on his tray there. +It's a crime and a swindle." +</P> + +<P> +"Don't mind Mason," interposed Malcolm. "He's a dyspeptic. When I get +to be his age—" +</P> + +<P> +"You did," said the other viciously, "five years ago." +</P> + +<P> +"—I'll be a vegetarian," finished the other. "Cheer up, Mason, and +have a potato." He turned to Echo: "I know a girl in my town who's +mighty keen to see you." +</P> + +<P> +"Nancy Langham!" +</P> + +<P> +He nodded. "She counts on having you down for Thanksgiving week. I +hope she'll succeed. I'm giving a great 'spread' down at the Mission, +and I want you girls to show me how to decorate the place. You will, +then, eh? I haven't forgotten how you and Nancy helped me out last +Christmas!" He reached over and patted her hand. "I do like to let it +soak into Poverty Terrace that I really keep company with 'dee +quality,' as the darkies say!" +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Spottiswoode looked at him curiously. "How frivolous and selfish +we must all seem to you, who give up your life to such people!" she +said. "I've heard so much about your work, Mr. Malcolm, especially in +the prisons. I think you are wonderful. I should know how to talk to +a Martian better than to a criminal. Don't you find it hard to get +into sympathy with them?" +</P> + +<P> +His smiling face turned serious. "'A fellow-feeling makes us wondrous +kind,'" he quoted. "You remember your Bunyan? I always say to myself, +'There, but for the lack of a sufficient temptation, goes Thomas +Malcolm!' Dear Lady, there is many a man in the Penitentiary who would +be a churchwarden to-day but for bad environment and good whisky." +</P> + +<P> +"And the law's mistakes," added Mason, sardonically. He had been +turning over on his finger a ring with a square green stone, and Echo +had been wondering vaguely where she had seen such a ring before. "I +know a man who's in for ten years, and I'd stake my life he's no more +guilty than I am." +</P> + +<P> +"How extraordinary!" exclaimed Mrs. Spottiswoode, and Malcolm observed +with wicked innocence: "I wonder who could have defended him!" +</P> + +<P> +The other smiled grimly at the thrust. "Oh, he was guilty enough +according to the evidence. But he was innocent, for all of that. He +is the man who was accused of shooting Cameron Craig." +</P> + +<P> +The blood flew to Echo's face and she bent her head over her salad. +She felt as though she had strayed unwittingly into an ambush where all +the old dread and terror from which she had fled had sprung again upon +her. +</P> + +<P> +"But," said Mrs. Spottiswoode, "I thought Craig himself identified him." +</P> + +<P> +Mason sniffed. "Craig was in no condition to identify anybody. I saw +the man and talked with him, day after day, for weeks. He was no +criminal—why, his very look gave the theory the lie!" +</P> + +<P> +A keen, thriving wonder crossed Echo's thought at the blunt assertion. +That livid face back of the spitting revolver hung before her mental +sight with strange vividness—the surly, wicked lips, the low brow and +narrow eyes. How was it possible that such a countenance could assume +at wont a look of innocency that would deceive a lawyer, even against +damning evidence, into a belief that he was a victim of circumstances? +</P> + +<P> +"What is your theory of the shooting, then?" asked Mrs. Spottiswoode, +interestedly. +</P> + +<P> +The lawyer was silent a moment, drawing little circles on the cloth +with his fork. "I haven't a wholly satisfactory one," he said at +length, slowly. "But I don't believe he did it. Craig, it is certain, +had a <I>rendezvous</I> with a woman, and the woman saw the shooting. I +believe her testimony would have proven that the man who was tried and +convicted was not the man who did it. That fact disposed of, I believe +he could have shown, if he had chosen to, that he had no connection +with the burglars, and would have been acquitted." +</P> + +<P> +"<I>Cherchez la femme!</I>" murmured the lady. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes. She would not come forward." +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Spottiswoode looked at Malcolm. "Have you seen him?" she asked. +</P> + +<P> +"No, I've been in New Orleans for three months. But I hope to begin my +visits at the Penitentiary very soon, and I'm looking forward to +meeting him." +</P> + +<P> +"You'll agree with me, I'll bet a hat!" said Mason. "By the way"—he +held up his hand—"he gave me this ring, the day he was sentenced." +</P> + +<P> +Echo felt every nerve suddenly tighten. For it had come to her in a +flash where she had seen that ring's counterpart: it had been on the +finger of the masked burglar on that horrible midnight in Craig's +library—when he had held out to her the letters from the safe! Her +heart began to beat suffocatingly. "<I>Take them and go—go +instantly!</I>"—she seemed to hear the tense command strike across the +car. A thrill ran over her. Was the ring a kind of badge, a sign of +their guilty calling? Or could it be that the man who was being tried +was <I>not</I> the man who had shot Craig—but the other, the one who had +saved her? +</P> + +<P> +She began to tremble, for another thought stabbed her. If this was so, +how could she honourably keep silence? The instant question touched +her conscience, her quick sense of justice and duty, with sudden +insistence. But for the spoilers themselves, she was the only witness +of that deed in the library. Craig—so narrow had been for him that +instant of observation—might have been mistaken. But not she! The +very fright and horror of the moment had indelibly fixed the shooter's +face upon her mind. Suppose Mason's hypothesis were correct—suppose +he had been no burglar, but an honourable man, caught, as she had been, +in a web of circumstance. In the crisis he had acted as a gentleman, +had thought of her before himself. Instead of flying with the others, +he had lingered to do that generous deed for her. What if it were +because of that he had been taken! If so, what a debt she owed him! +</P> + +<P> +It came to her suddenly that she must be <I>certain</I>. Never again could +she know peace of soul till she knew the truth. If the man in the +Penitentiary was indeed the man who had shot Craig, well and good. If +not... +</P> + +<P> +She turned her head, for Malcolm was speaking to her. "When you come +to Nancy's you must let me take you both out to see these <I>protégés</I> of +mine that have to be shut up for the good of their souls. Wouldn't you +like to, eh?" +</P> + +<P> +She thought he must hear the beating of her pulse. "Would—don't they +resent being stared at?" she faltered. +</P> + +<P> +"Bless your heart!" he said, with one of his bear-like laughs. "It's +good for them. They don't get a squint at roses and sunshine every +day! A sight like you two girls will make them want to get out, and +keep them on their best behaviour, so as to earn all the commutation +good marks bring! I'll get the Warden to take us through the shops. +That's the most interesting part." +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +"I must be quite certain!" The words seemed singing themselves over in +a banal refrain that sounded through the stir and rumble of the +station, mingling with 'Lige's hearty voice of welcome, and her +father's loving greeting as he lifted her carefully from the car step. +</P> + +<P> +"You're a lot better? <I>Sure?</I>" he queried anxiously, as he held both +her hands tight in his. +</P> + +<P> +"Sure!" she smiled. "We've had a <I>wonderful</I> time. I couldn't begin +to tell you about it in my letters. But I'm glad to be home just the +same! How are mother and Chilly? Mr. Malcolm was on the train—there +he is now, waving his hand from the window. Did the wireless tell you +we lost a propeller-blade two days out?" +</P> + +<P> +The dusk flowed over them in violet waves as they drove homeward and +she laughed and talked gaily, with her hand clasped in his under the +carriage-robe, the horses prancing and curvetting in the keen October +air. Once, at a crossing, she put out her hand and touched the +coachman's arm. +</P> + +<P> +"Take Main Street, 'Lige," she directed. "I'd like to see how it +looks." +</P> + +<P> +As he swung into the broader thoroughfare, her father said, "You're +looking at the new bank building. You see it's nearly done." +</P> + +<P> +But she was really looking beyond, at a four-storied office-front, on +whose second floor the windows of a suite showed in chaste, golden +letters the legend, "Henry Sevier, Attorney-at-Law." The windows were +blank and dusty, and their blinds were drawn. +</P> + +<P> +"Why, you're shivering!" said her father suddenly, and drew the robe +more closely about her. +</P> + +<P> +She smiled at him. +</P> + +<P> +"No," she said, "but I think I'm just a little tired. Drive faster, +'Lige. I—I want to get home." +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap31"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XXXI +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +AMBUSH +</H4> + +<P> +Lying in his bunk Harry awoke to the consciousness of another bleak +dawn. The morning waking was always a pain to him, for in sleep the +barriers fell away and the mind fared forth along the free, sweet +highways of memory. He did not open his eyes at once, but he felt the +rasp of the coarse blanket at his throat, smelled the cold clamminess +of the granite floor, and realised by a thousand reminders of the +sharpened senses that another round of the treadmill awaited him. He +remembered drearily that to-morrow would be Thanksgiving Day. In the +world outside it was the time of yellow maples and the red of the +frost-kissed sumac, of wild grapes purpling in the thickets and clumps +of alder blooms in the fence-corners—of blazing hearths and good +fellowship! +</P> + +<P> +Mingling with the stir of reawakening life in the corridors there +sounded a light <I>tap-tap</I>—the tattoo of a tin spoon against the stone. +</P> + +<P> +Without moving he opened his eyes. Paddy the Brick was up and +dressed—if donning the cheap flannel shirt, the striped jacket and +trousers, might be called dressing—and, stooped in the corner of the +cell, was industriously at work with the 'prison-wireless.' For a +while Harry watched him curiously; then suddenly his ear made out a +word. For in time he had taken his cell-mate's sneering advice, and +because the busy mind, turned too long upon itself, must perforce +occupy itself with something extraneous, had mastered the code that was +scratched in the white-washed wall. He had a retentive memory, +sharpened now by disuse, and the tiny <I>tap-tap</I> that he had learned to +distinguish through the muffling masonry, though he never used it as a +means of communication, had soon become an open book to him. Strange +things he had heard in this manner—furtive, uncouth gossip of that +under-world, which, although much was couched in an unknown <I>argot</I> and +was meaningless to him, had yet served in a way to lighten the +unendurable emptiness. The word he had caught now was "visitors." +</P> + +<P> +In another moment Harry was listening intently, for the sounds were +spelling something which instinct told him was wickedly suggestive +though he could not guess its purport. "Warden ... to-day," tapped the +signalled code, "—take ... number nine ... machine ... your ... +chance—" +</P> + +<P> +Whatever else might have been said was blotted by the whirring clang of +the electric gong in the central corridor. Through the great +lamelliform bee-hive it sent its waking clamour, the signal for rising +to the new day's tasks. With the sound Paddy the Brick thrust the +stolen utensil out of sight and shot a stealthy glance at the upper +bunk, but its occupant had apparently just awakened. +</P> + +<P> +All the ensuing morning, as he rubbed himself down in the plenteous +cold water which the spigot provided, and did his share in the cleaning +of the bare cell—while he sopped his brown bread in the weak breakfast +coffee, and presently tramped in the long file to the shop to feed the +voracious machines with the clean-smelling leather—all the while +Harry's brain was busy with the message he had heard. "Visitors?" +Occasionally visitors had passed through the shops—panging reminders +to him of the world outside. Perhaps in some devious way the other had +heard that some would come to-day. But turn and twist the rest of the +words how he might, they meant nothing. Dinner time came, with its +lifting break in the unvarying monotony, then the long lock-step back +to the shop and its labour. +</P> + +<P> +The work had come to be far more welcome to him than the cell, with the +partner to whose society he was chained. The hum and click and throb +stole his thought, and the automatic movements, in which he had become +an adept, soothed his aching mind. For several hours this afternoon +the mechanical occupation absorbed him and he worked on, noting little +about him. Then, all at once, as he turned to pick up the bit of +cotton waste with which he kept the steel clutches of the machine +before him free from dust, he became conscious of something +unaccustomed. His own machine was number eight. At the one adjoining, +number nine, which was next to the broad middle way bisecting the shop, +Paddy the Brick was wont to stand. Now, however, another man was in +his stead. At near view Harry recognised him as one whose place was +further along, next the wall, and glancing in that direction he saw +that Paddy the Brick was running the other's machine. +</P> + +<P> +The meaning of the "wireless" message leaped instantly to his mind. +When, after dinner, the long line had broken and distributed its units, +the man had taken number nine, and the exchange had been effected so +quickly and naturally that it had been thus far unnoted by the watchful +Superintendent sitting moveless on the raised platform at the end of +the aisle, his revolvers on the desk before him. What did the transfer +mean? Harry wondered. The men nearby worked on, but they seemed to be +restive, waiting for something, with a subdued excitement and anxiety. +As he glanced sideways toward the newcomer, at the haggard parchment +visage, lean and ashen with the pallor of long confinement, he noted +that the other kept his back to the platform and his head studiously +bent over his machine, and there darted to Harry's recollection what +Paddy the Brick had said one day to him—of the "lifer" and his hatred +of the warden. The tapped message of the morning had spoken of the +latter, too. "Your ... chance!" Could that have meant the chance to +"get" the man he hated? +</P> + +<P> +As if in answer to the startled thought, there sounded voices behind +him. He looked over his shoulder. The Warden himself was entering the +door at the end of the shop, and there were visitors with him. +</P> + +<P> +Then instantly every conscious thought save one fled from him and he +clapped a hand to his mouth to stifle a cry. With the Warden were +three figures, a man and two women, and the women were Echo Allen and +Nancy Langham. +</P> + +<P> +A sickness like that of death rushed upon him. That she could come +there—careless of the chance that she might see him in these loathsome +surroundings—a common convict, with cropped hair and striped clothing, +marked with all the badges of the jailbird—smote him with an +unendurable pain. She, who knew that he had loved her—to see him in +this guise! All the agony he had suffered rolled over him anew, +intensified a thousand-fold. He pulled his cap-visor low over his eyes +and snatching up the bit of oily waste, drew it across his cheek, +smudging his face from chin to brow. +</P> + +<P> +The little group of four had paused near the desk of the +Superintendent, the Warden smilingly pointing out to the two girls the +details of the work. Harry's fingers performed their task by sheer +instinct; for his very life he had not been able to help stealing a +swift sidelong look at Echo's face, pale beneath its russet cloud of +hair, and he distinguished with a fierce bitterness the jaded shadows +that had crept beneath her eyes, tokens that belied her conventionally +polite show of interest. So, though she condemned him to this torture, +she too suffered! +</P> + +<P> +Could he have looked beneath that controlled exterior he would have +discerned a pain and dread to match his own. With that luncheon in the +dining-car a sense of fate had fallen upon her, heavy and irrevocable, +as though some huge weight was closing down. The whip of conscience +had driven her to this day's quest. If the law had erred—if, in truth +an innocent man, as Mason believed, lay under condemnation—it was for +lack of her testimony: the thought had laid upon her sensitive mind a +new sense of guilty responsibility. She must be certain, beyond +peradventure. The visit to the Evelands for the Thanksgiving season +had furnished the opportunity and the round of the Penitentiary with +Malcolm had arranged itself. It had been easy to advert to Mason's +belief in the innocence of the prisoner he had defended, and it had +seemed natural enough for her to ask the Warden to point out the man as +they went through the shops. They had now entered the room in which he +had told her the man worked—she was standing on the threshold of the +knowledge she feared. +</P> + +<P> +She started at the Warden's voice, close to her ear, above the rasping +clamour of the machines: "The last row, at the end. The middle +machine—that's the one." +</P> + +<P> +With a quick intake of her breath she looked where he pointed. The +colour faded from her cheeks. Doubt—if she had clung to doubt—was +ended now! The man who had started with levelled pistol from behind +the curtain of Craig's library had been short and stocky and +round-shouldered. The side-face of the distant prisoner at whom she +was now looking with such painful intensity, under the shadow of his +cap-brim showed smudged with oil and dust; but his shoulders were broad +and straight and his frame tall and lithe. Whatever the law said, this +man was not the man who had shot Craig! She alone could swear it! +</P> + +<P> +She felt suddenly a kind of terror of the place. She touched Malcolm's +arm. "I've seen enough—please! Could we turn back now?" +</P> + +<P> +The Warden overheard and nodded. "Just wait here a moment," he said, +"and we'll go. I want to take a look forward." He strode from them +down the broad way between the lines of workers. +</P> + +<P> +Harry heard the step behind him on the steel floor. He thought the +others were with him. Under the rattle of the cogs his sick +imagination caught the swish of a dress—almost he thought he caught a +faint breath of a familiar perfume—and he averted his face till they +should pass. It was by reason of this that his lowered eyes caught a +stealthy movement in the man at the next machine—a movement of one +hand which crept under his jacket, and jerked forth, clutching +something shining and murderous. +</P> + +<P> +Harry acted without conscious thought, by swift and certain instinct. +As the lean arm, tense with hate, went up behind the Warden's back, he +leaped forward with a cry of warning, caught the wrist whose hand held +the sharpened file, and both went down clinched and struggling together. +</P> + +<P> +The cry, sharp and strained, pierced across the din. It brought the +Superintendent to his feet on his platform, like the release of a +coiled spring, a revolver in either hand. +</P> + +<P> +"Back to the door!" he roared, and Malcolm's sinewy arm swept the two +girls behind him. The fierce clamour of a bell sounded outside. There +was sudden pandemonium. Doors opened, men in uniform dashed by her, +and on the platform the Superintendent stood, crouching forward like a +panther about to spring, still as a statue, both hands outstretched +with their gleaming muzzles, his eyes flashing over the room. +</P> + +<P> +In that desperate struggle, as he clung to the maddened convict, Harry +was conscious only of the strenuous confusion—of commands that snapped +like whip-lashes—of the burly form of the Warden above him and that of +a "trusty" who snatched at the vicious weapon—of a sudden anguished +pang in his shoulder. +</P> + +<P> +Then, swiftly and sweetly, the whole world slipped away into blankness +and silence. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +A half hour later, as Echo and Nancy sat with Malcolm in the office, on +the ground floor of the frame building just inside the great double +gates of the prison, the Warden entered. His grave face lightened with +a smile of reassurance. +</P> + +<P> +"All well," he said cheerfully. "It came close to being a nasty wound, +but the doctor says no harm will come of it, though he will be in the +hospital ward for a week. I wouldn't have had this fracas happen while +you ladies were here for a year's salary," he added, "and that's a +fact!" +</P> + +<P> +Nancy's face was still pale, and she shivered as he spoke, but she gave +a little laugh, as she said, "We didn't bring you luck to-day, did we? +You'll be wary of Friday visitors hereafter." +</P> + +<P> +"On the contrary," he asserted, "I'm inclined to think I'm a mighty +lucky man. It was cunningly planned, with collusion, too, and if it +had succeeded there might have been a very bad hour or two—for +everybody." +</P> + +<P> +Malcolm turned to him. "The man saved the situation, Warden, and it +was a very close call, indeed. If there was collusion I imagine it'll +be dangerous in the ranks for him hereafter." +</P> + +<P> +The Warden nodded. "I've thought of that. The trusty who has been +clerking in the Record-Room, upstairs, is sick, as it happens. He +shall have the place. He sha'n't come to any harm as long as I'm in +charge, rest assured of that." +</P> + +<P> +He went with them to the great double-gate. "It's a curious thing," he +said thoughtfully, as they said good-bye, "that the man who did that +should have been the very one we had been talking about, isn't it?" +</P> + +<P> +The same thought was in all their minds. There had flashed across +Echo's, too, a memory of her childhood, a revolting incident of another +prison, where a hundred convicts had risen, had killed their keepers +and for two days had run desperate riot within the enclosure—till +troops had been rushed to the scene. What if that flaming human lava +had burst beyond control to-day? She shuddered. +</P> + +<P> +A single hand, maybe, had prevented this—the hand of the man who once +before had saved her—who was now shut in this horrible place, perhaps +for want of the testimony which she alone could give! +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap32"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XXXII +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +THE COMING OF JOHN STARK +</H4> + +<P> +Harry rose from his seat at the desk in the Record-Room and went over +to the window. The frost had painted silver ferns and sea weed on its +pane, and the prison yard, under the high, saffron-tinted sun, was +white with a light powdering of snow which hid its harsh outlines and +dingy yellow hue with a mantle of purity and beauty. It was a stinging +cold though sunshiny afternoon. Along the wall the sentries, as they +paced, swung benumbed arms to start the sluggish blood coursing to +warmth. Here and there on the hard ground a pigeon traced its feathery +footprints, startling the quarrelsome sparrows, and above in the clear +sky a buzzard drew widening circles, an ink-blot on the blue. Across +the open space came the muffled roar of the shops and down under the +inner gateway the gate-keeper was stamping his Arctic-shod feet and +whistling "Weep no more my lad-ee," in syncopated time. +</P> + +<P> +Two weeks Harry had been in the hospital ward, for after those months +of confinement the depleted blood had made recuperation slow; but he +had steadily mended, and now, though still at times his healing +shoulder pained him somewhat, he was practically as strong as before. +He had been acutely grateful for the change to the pleasant +Record-Room, with its broad window to the sunshine and the drier upper +air, for the fact that he no longer tramped in the lock-step or took +his meals in the common mess-room—most of all for release from his +unsavoury cell-mate. For since the affair in the shop, he had been +given a cell to himself. +</P> + +<P> +His momentary glimpse on that day of Echo had stung his every sense to +quivering protest. It had pierced, as with a fiery sword, the torpor +which had unwrapped his love with its protecting armour and that love +had awaked to agonised consciousness, vivified and intensified. Then, +in his loneliness, the knowledge that the woman he would have died for +had left him to drag out his penalty, would sweep over him till a +fierce hatred of her would rise up in him—to be swept away as swiftly +by something sweeter and stronger that would not be denied. So, in the +end, mingled with this confusion of feeling, there came to him the +knowledge that the bitter conviction that she could never again be +anything to him, with the contempt for life which had grown from it, +had been nevertheless inexpressibly softened by the living warmth of +her presence, sad and fleeting as that had been. +</P> + +<P> +Presently Harry turned back to the desk, and picked up the annotated +card, a portion of whose record he had been about to transcribe in +permanent form in a leathern tome that lay there. It was the +filing-card on whose reverse side was pasted his own photograph, +full-face and profile, and containing his physical measurements—taken +upon the precise and delicate instruments that lined the room—which +had been filled out on the day of his arrival. It was the sight of +this, with the bitter memories it evoked, which had given him pause. +There it was, an enduring monument, stamping forever the man to whom it +corresponded, a convict, thrust, so long as he should live, from the +society of clean and upright men and women, debarred even from the +exercise of the functions of citizenship! +</P> + +<P> +As he dipped his pen in the ink, a quick step sounded on the stairway, +and the door opened to admit a man wearing a frogged overcoat with huge +fur collar and lapels, and a fur cap whose flaps were turned down over +his ears. He was about Harry's age though of slightly heavier build, +with somewhat similar firm chin and grey eyes, but with cheeks in which +the blood darkled redly, and across one was a slanting scar, slight but +sufficiently perceptible. He carried a small valise which he set down, +blowing on his nattily-gloved fingers. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh! I beg pardon," he said. "The Warden told me I might change my +togs up here. I didn't know the room was occupied." +</P> + +<P> +"You'll not disturb me," answered Harry. "As it happens, I am occupied +too." +</P> + +<P> +The stranger laughed—a rather eager, boyish laugh which caught Harry +with a subtle tang of old acquaintance. With the pen in his hand, he +was staring curiously at that ruddy cheek and its slanting scar, his +mind following something elusive and far away. He was feeling the edge +of a half-recollection, vague and shadowy and dream-like, of a saw-dust +bar-room floor lighted with flaring lamps, of ribald conversation, of a +deal table across which a face like that had looked at him. But the +memory at which he grasped had belonged to that phase of intoxication +in which sense-impression had left no enduring record, and he could not +capture it. +</P> + +<P> +John Stark was unconscious of the fixed gaze. He had opened the valise +upon a chair and now was laying its contents upon another. Harry saw +with surprise that these included a striped jacket and trousers, flat +peaked cap and heavy hob-nailed shoes such as each inmate of the prison +wore. Last he took out a flat tin box which opened out in two +sections, and set it on the end of the desk. It was a "make-up" box of +the stage dressing-room, and the sight of its tiny compartments, +holding rouge, lamp-black, powder and grease-paint, the pencils and +hare's foot, brought back to Harry with a rush old days of amateur +theatricals and society stagery. These articles laid out, the other +began rapidly to undress. He chuckled as, turning, he caught the look +of puzzle on Harry's face. +</P> + +<P> +"I'm not really crazy," he said laughingly. "The fact is, I'm trying +an experiment—with the Warden's permission. For half an hour I'm +going to take my place with those fellows down there;"—he nodded +towards the window—"going in to supper with them. I have a bet on +with the Deputy Warden that I can do it so that none of the +Superintendents will spot me!" +</P> + +<P> +He had discarded shirt, collar and shoes, and was now arraying himself +in the coarse striped garments and clumsy foot-wear. He looked himself +over half-humorously. "Ugh!" he exclaimed. "I swear, it gives me the +creeps. This is the real stuff, you see! I don't get the true spirit +of the thing when I play it." +</P> + +<P> +"When you play it?" repeated Harry, inquiringly. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh," said the other. "I ought to explain. I'm starring in 'The Jail +Bird'—the play that's on here this week. I have the title-role. It's +a fad with me to get up my 'business' first-hand, and this institution +is too good a chance to miss. It's mighty good press-agent stuff for +the local papers, incidentally!" The lid of the tin box was a mirror, +and propping this upright, he now busied himself with the facial +make-up, applying a greyish grease-paint which obliterated the scar on +the cheek and lent the requisite pallor, and deepening this with darker +pencilled shades. In the midst of his labour he asked: +</P> + +<P> +"Have you seen the piece?" +</P> + +<P> +"No," said Harry, grimly. "Our business here interferes somewhat with +our evening pleasures." +</P> + +<P> +Something in the tone made the other look up quickly. Harry's cap had +been pushed back when the visitor had entered. He had on, also, a +spotless duck over-jacket which buttoned close up to the throat. Now +the cap was pulled low on his forehead, and the jacket was open, +revealing the tell-tale stripes beneath. The actor started. +</P> + +<P> +"By Jove!" he ejaculated, in embarrassment. "I thought—I didn't +know—" +</P> + +<P> +"So I perceived," said Harry calmly. "Pray do not apologise, however. +The atmosphere does not tend to develop over-sensitiveness. I must +congratulate you on your appearance. The effect is really wonderful." +</P> + +<P> +There was no sarcasm in his words: the illusion was marvellously +carried. When the peaked cap was pulled over the other's forehead, a +little to one side, Harry thought him highly likely to carry off his +wager with the Deputy Warden. +</P> + +<P> +At the moment the bell sounded—the signal to knock off work for the +early supper—and John Stark rose hastily. "I'm off now for the +lock-step," he said, with his hand on the door. "By the way, if these +duds of mine are in the way, chuck 'em in some other room. I can dress +anywhere." +</P> + +<P> +The brogans clattered down the stair. +</P> + +<P> +Harry went to the window and watched him cross the yard, a turnkey, +wearing a suppressed grin, by his side. Then he returned to the desk, +but his pen lay idle by his hand. The curious visit, with its whiff of +the outside world, had been packed with clutching reminders of things +that had had pleasant part in his past—reminders of society nights +when, for sweet charity's sake, he had played those old mimic roles. +Some one entered, bringing his supper in a tin pail, and went out +again, but he did not look up. He was thinking with bitterness that +the flippant masquerader, sitting now with that striped company in the +mess-room, would presently emerge, free to pass out into the glad +world. It would be only a lark to laugh over, an essay in effrontery +performed for a wager and the delectation of a press-agent! +</P> + +<P> +Harry suddenly felt the longing to be free take him by the throat, so +that he trembled in every limb with the force of it. He smelled the +wind racing across frosty meadows; he could almost fancy that he heard +the flow of river-water under its icy coverlet; he could almost see the +gnarled catalpas along the Allen driveway lifting their wintry twisted +arms toward him. What would it not mean to him if he, like that +cheerful stroller, might but slough off this hateful, unnatural +character and step forth, himself again! +</P> + +<P> +He started. A thought mad as a nightmare had flashed through his +brain. He felt his blood beat to his temples; then instantly he became +icily cool and tense in every nerve. +</P> + +<P> +In another moment he had thrown off his over-jacket, and was seated +before the make-up box. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap33"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XXXIII +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +THE UNDERSTUDY +</H4> + +<P> +With the certainty of ancient practice he applied rouge and pencil +deftly to his face, rubbing in a deeper tinge on the cheeks, shadowing +the temples, accentuating by ever so little the corners of eyes and +mouth. Lastly he drew a slanting scar on the right cheek, emphasising +it a trifle, as the keynote of the counterfeit. +</P> + +<P> +He looked at himself, swiftly, critically. There was but the one +double gate and the single watchman to pass—and the sunlight was not +bright under the archway! And luckily the fur cap, with its ear-flaps, +effectually hid the cropped scalp. He wasted no time in changing +clothes, but turned up the striped trousers and the sleeves of the +jacket and donned the smart habilaments over his prison rig, the extra +lining compensating for his slighter form. In five minutes he was +completely dressed, even to spats and flaunting tie. All the while he +was thinking rapidly and coolly, weighing contingencies, estimating +chances, taking into lightning account each detail which might mean the +slenderest advantage in the desperate game. Lastly he thrust his +prison cap under his coat and put the make-up box and the tin +dinner-pail into the empty valise. +</P> + +<P> +Overcoated and with the valise in his hand, he strode to the door—to +come back to his desk with a quick afterthought, to pick up the +record-card that bore his own number, and slip it into an inner pocket. +Then he opened the door and went quickly down the stair. +</P> + +<P> +Fate was kind. The Warden was not in his office. As a matter of fact, +at that very moment, with outward gravity yet with inner amusement, he +was witnessing John Stark's nonchalant experiment and finding the bit +of clever impersonation, under the very eyes of his unsuspecting +assistants, vastly diverting. +</P> + +<P> +Harry went out to the gate. +</P> + +<P> +The watchman looked up, surprised. "Hello!" he said. "The half-hour +isn't up already, is it? Or did you weaken?" +</P> + +<P> +Harry laughed. "Not I!" he answered, airily. "I've had no end of a +lark. I'd have stayed longer only I've got a rehearsal on. I could +have pulled the wool over their eyes for a week!" As he spoke he drew +out a silver cigarette-and-match box which his hand had encountered in +the overcoat pocket, and lighted a cigarette behind his cupped hands. +In that crucial instant he dared not look at the face so near him and +his heart seemed to flutter and then stop beating—till there came the +ponderous grind of the great lock as the inner gate swung open. +</P> + +<P> +The watchman was chuckling as he unlocked the outer barrier. "Well, +that's one on the Deputy Warden!" he said appreciatively. "You're a +clever one to have pulled it off!" +</P> + +<P> +Harry stepped jauntily through. "Come and see me do it on the stage," +he said, nodding a brisk good-bye. "It's up to the Warden to stand +tickets all round, I should think!" +</P> + +<P> +The gate clanged shut behind him. +</P> + +<P> +The sound sent to his soul the first agonised stab of futility. He had +won through those pitiless encircling walls, yet what chance had he of +ultimate escape, after all, there on the highway, in that recognisable +costume, with scant grace at best from pursuit? Then, even as the cold +wave of hopelessness swept over him, he saw something which sent his +blood running like quicksilver; it was the actor's empty motor standing +at the side of the road. +</P> + +<P> +In another minute he was in its seat, his grip on the wheel, his hand +touching the lever of the self-starter. It was not of a make which he +knew, but he had always been an ardent motorist, had known every cog +and bearing of his own car's intricate mechanism, and before the +machine was well under way he had mastered its essentials. +</P> + +<P> +As the snow-dusted road spun out behind him, he drew deep, gasping +breaths of the cold air and felt the dimming sunshine on his face like +the touch of some magical elixir, yet he was free from agitation, his +mind was working clearly and coolly. The alarm would come soon. When +the genial young tragedian returned to the office building, he would be +likely to assume that his suggestion had been acted upon, and his +clothing bestowed in another room. Subsequent inquiry might be worth a +few minutes. The absence of Harry's cap and the tin pail would suggest +that he had gone to his cell to eat his supper, a privilege that was +his when he cared to avail himself of it—this would be good for a few +minutes more. A general search of the buildings would be next in +order. How soon the inquiry would embrace the watchman at the outer +gate could not be guessed. Altogether he might count, perhaps, on a +half-hour. He could cover few miles in that time, and telephone and +the clicking wire would soon be busy. It would be the automobile that +would be first traced, and the sentries on the wall would report the +direction he had taken. He must rid himself of the car, and somehow +double on his trail! +</P> + +<P> +Far to the right, across wastes of snowy fields and numb, glittering +trees, a line of telegraph poles thrust up darkly against the skyline. +A quick plan flashed to his mind. The road was topping a gentle rise +now, where the wind had swept the hard ground clear of the light snow. +He stopped, and cast a glance before and behind him; no vehicle was in +sight. He sprang out and pulled out the rails of the fence that lined +the road, then ran the motor into the field and into a hollow of dead, +rustling stalks, where stood a group of hayricks which would +effectually hide it from the highway. He left the fur-overcoat and the +valise in the car, replaced the fence-rails and ran across the field to +the railroad track. A quarter of a mile further along stood a small +country station and he turned his steps thither, making shift as he +went to wipe the grease-paint from his face with John Stark's perfumed +handkerchief. +</P> + +<P> +The ticket-seller, who combined with his duties those of freight and +express agent and general factotum, was sweeping out his tiny box of an +office. "What is the next train west?" inquired Harry. +</P> + +<P> +"None till nine to-night," was the reply. "There's one due in twenty +minutes, but she only stops for through passengers." +</P> + +<P> +Before entering Harry had gone through John Stark's pockets; now he +pushed a bill under the little wicket. "I happen to be going through," +he said easily. +</P> + +<P> +The other made out the ticket with deliberation, laboriously counted +the change and leisurely went out to the platform to affix the red +flag. The minutes that passed thereafter the lone passenger was all +his life to remember as a ghastly interval measured by dragging epochs +that drew themselves snail-like across some incalculable duration of +time. When the express came to its grinding stop cold drops of +perspiration were on Harry's face. He swung himself aboard and went +forward to the day-coach. +</P> + +<P> +Five minutes later the train stopped at a water-tank, to refresh the +thirsty engine. A half mile away, outlined sombrely against the dusky +evening blue, rose a huddle of dingy yellow walls. The occupant of the +seat in front of him leaned to look through the window. +</P> + +<P> +"What are those buildings?" he asked interestedly of the conductor, who +was passing down the aisle. +</P> + +<P> +"That's the State Penitentiary," was the answer. +</P> + +<P> +As he spoke through the silence there came a deep, dull <I>boom</I>, +repeated again and again—the sound of a monster bell, tolling. +</P> + +<P> +"What's that?" the other asked. Windows went up along the car. Harry +lifted his also, with outward coolness but with a curious spasm of the +heart. The conductor stooped to peer beside him. +</P> + +<P> +"It's the alarm," he said. "A prisoner must have escaped." +</P> + +<P> +Amid excited exclamations the train started again, and the conductor +withdrew his head. "They'll soon get him," he predicted, as he punched +Harry's ticket. "The poor devil won't get far in those striped clothes +they make them wear!" +</P> + +<P> +"No," said Harry. "I fancy he won't." +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Night had fallen, the dark relieved by the dim lustre of a thin new +moon, when Sevier rose and sauntered back to the platform. The train +was passing through a defile and laboriously puffing up a grade. He +looked back into the lighted car; no one was observing him. He +buttoned his coat close about him and poising on the lowest step to +choose his ground, sprang off into a snowbank. +</P> + +<P> +He had made his leap with all the care possible, but the speed of the +train was such that only the snow and his padded clothing saved him +from serious injury. As it was it was some minutes before he could +regain his breath, and then it came with a keen stab that seemed a +sword piercing his shoulder—a sharp complaint from the recent wound. +He rose painfully, but at the first step collapsed with a groan, +realising that he had twisted his ankle badly. With lips compressed +from the wretched pang, he rose again and set the injured member to the +ground, forcing it to bear his weight. For a while each step was +agony, then this dulled somewhat and he went steadily on, limping along +the uneven ties. +</P> + +<P> +When he came to the crest of the rise he stopped and looked about him. +He knew, roughly, where he was. Across the dark valley unrolling at +his feet under a sky that shook with stars, he could dimly make out +another darker ridge. Beyond lay a deeper valley and beyond that the +foot-hills of the Blue Ridge, and there, forty miles away as the crow +flies—how far by the irregular route he must take he could not +estimate—lay his mountain lodge, the lonely little demesne of forest +and stream, whither he had been wont to go for summer weeks of hunting +and fishing, with its rough but spacious bungalow presided over by his +care-taker, old "Jubilee Jim," whose father had been a slave of his +father before the Civil War. +</P> + +<P> +Forty miles as the crow flies! Across a difficult and sparsely-settled +country, with now only the faint moonlight and a natural instinct of +direction to guide him, in patent-leather shoes and with a sprained +ankle! +</P> + +<P> +He set his teeth and plunged down the declivity through the tumbled +rocks and snow-drifts. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap34"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XXXIV +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +THE CRUCIBLE +</H4> + +<P> +Echo stood at the gate of Midfields, her gloved hand delaying to close +it, her eyes gazing down the featureless street along which yellow +window-squares were beginning to spring out, and vague figures moved, +now standing out sharply under the newly lighted arc-lamps at the +crossing, now vanishing beyond into the chill windless dusk. Behind +her lay the purpling lawn, with its tumult of leaves under the acacias, +the oaks with their red-lipped foliage and the tall chrysanthemums at +the edge of the frost-touched grass that stretched like the skins of +young fawns about the great house with its fluted columns, dim and grey +now in the deepening twilight. About her were only the quiet of the +cold evening, the bewildered shadows huddling beneath the shrubs, and +the faint snap of frosty tree-branches in the tightening of the first +bonds of winter, above only the windless silence and a wild white moon +flowing through dusky wreaths of cloud. +</P> + +<P> +But she felt no soothing influence in the hush. +</P> + +<P> +Her mind was far away, in another city and state; her thought had +entered again the gloomy prison which she had visited with Nancy +Langham and Malcolm—on a day when a prisoner had intervened to save +the Warden's life. The peace of autumn evenings brought no comfort to +that place, save it were the mere rest of wearied bodies. A city of +itself, it was as alien to that city so near it, of comfortable homes +and pleasant people which she had visited, as the deep life of the +coal-miner is alien to that of the free hunter who breathes the sweeter +air a thousand feet above the other's sunless toil. Outside of those +walls folk were eager and merry; inside lights were dim, life itself +sluggish and inept; there were sore hearts, sterile hopes, smouldering +hatreds, an oligarchy of despotism ruling with slow cruelties, a +community of apathy and despair. +</P> + +<P> +Since her return from the Langhams she had moved, so it seemed to her, +in a kind of sombre dream in which her daily duties were mechanical and +involuntary and her only real life that inner consciousness which had +writhed and struggled unceasingly. A sense of actual, personal guilt +bound her, by a bond stronger than steel, to that unknown prisoner in +the Penitentiary, weighing upon her spirit as heavy as a promise to the +dead. +</P> + +<P> +What should she—what was she bound to do? Which way should she turn? +There was Mason's opinion, based upon a long and sensitive intercourse, +that the man was no criminal; that, had he been absolved of attempted +murder, he could have cleared himself of the baleful association. But +that, after all, was only Mason's opinion. He might be wrong. And if +so, though the man had not fired the shot, he was a partner in his +comrade's iniquity, a party to the greater guilt. An enemy to society, +his penalty was just and right. Was she called upon, on such an empty +hypothesis, to take upon herself a horrible mantle of notoriety? So +she had reasoned, but the self-accusation had remained, not to be +argued back by casuistry, a stern visitant that stood insistently +before her, pointing the stern finger of denunciation. +</P> + +<P> +As she stood by the gate in the dusk, she shivered as though the still +cold penetrated beneath her furs. She must tell the truth! Whatever +the result, she must disclose the part she had played. She had no +thought that this might be accomplished without publicity, or that +testimony which might be basis for executive action could be secret. +In imagination she pictured herself standing before the same tribunal +by which an innocent man had been condemned, telling her story to the +impartial and impersonal Law—telling it openly, before all the world! +</P> + +<P> +The world? It was not this thought which in this moment of harrowing +decision seemed to scratch her soul like an etcher's needle. She was +thinking now only of Harry Sevier. He stood out alone, sharply, +clearly defined against the meaningless multitude. She could no longer +take refuge in her pride; that had vanished long ago in the misery of +his absence. She wanted him, and him only, desired him with all the +strength of her woman's love, which had been sharpened and deepened by +the experiences through which she had been passing. When he returned, +it would be to find her the centre of an open scandal, sprung to new +and sensational life—the "mysterious woman" who had been blazoned in a +hundred headlines, her name no longer spotless, but cheapened by tawdry +mystery and smirched by innuendo! Would it not kill any vestige of +love his heart might still hold for her? +</P> + +<P> +And yet beneath her dread and apprehension there had come to her in her +struggle the awakening of something as deep and imperative as her +love—the insistent "Thou shalt!"—the nascent must of truth and +honour, fruit of generations of clean ancestry, which brought clearer +vision and resolve. +</P> + +<P> +She turned from the gate at length, her step dragging as if from +weariness. She had a strange feeling that in that final hour of +decision she had grown physically and mentally old. +</P> + +<P> +As she neared the house, there came from the placid street the raucous +<I>honk</I> of a motor and the sound of masculine voices lifted in a song +whose refrain solicitously inquired as to the whereabouts of a certain +dog named Rover. The chording was somewhat uncertain, but any lack was +more than made up by laughter and noise. She recognised the baritone +as that of her brother, Chisholm. +</P> + +<P> +Chilly jumped down at the gate, and as the automobile turned and sped +back, its occupants calling jovial good-byes, he ran after her up the +drive. Overtaking her, he leaned to kiss her cheek, as she caught a +familiar odour upon his breath. She turned her face aside. +</P> + +<P> +He noted this with a little laugh. "Come, prunes and prisms," he said, +"out with it! Yes, I've had a drink—numerous ones, in fact. Now on +with the lecture; let joy be unconfined!" +</P> + +<P> +"When did I ever lecture you, Chilly?" Echo answered, dully. +</P> + +<P> +"You <I>have</I> been pretty decent, that's a fact, Echo," he responded, +with humorous lugubriousness. "I wish father took after you more!" +</P> + +<P> +They had reached the porch now and he stole a quick glance through the +window. "I discern the shadow of my doting parent aforesaid," he +remarked flippantly, "and having a due regard for the proprieties—and +peace—I think I'll slip in the side-door and give the prodigal a +wash-up and a clove before he enters the lion's den." +</P> + +<P> +He nodded laughingly and left her to enter the front door alone. +</P> + +<P> +A few minutes later, divested of coat and furs, she came into the +drawing-room where her father and mother sat, the former with his +magazine and the latter perusing the evening paper. Mrs. Allen +withdrew her lorgnette and looked up. +</P> + +<P> +"By the way, Echo," she said. "Here's the closing chapter of the +adventure you and Nancy had at the jail." She turned the page and read +aloud: +</P> + +<BR> + +<P CLASS="letter"> +"It became known to-day that a dangerous criminal escaped day before +yesterday and got clean away from the Penitentiary of our sister state. +The prisoner, who was serving a term of twenty years for burglary, a +few months since shot down Mr. Cameron Craig, the well known financier, +in his library at midnight. It is to be hoped that there will be a +close examination into what appears to be a glaring exhibition of lax +methods and unpardonable carelessness on the part of the prison +authorities." +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Echo could not have had a deeper sensation of amazement and relief. A +wave of excitement had passed over her, leaving her cool and +self-possessed, and able to take a natural part in the conversation +that followed. But in her heart she was saying over and over: +</P> + +<P> +"I am safe—safe! There is no question now of my telling! The secret +is mine—mine—mine!" +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap35"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XXXV +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +SANCTUARY +</H4> + +<P> +In his little cabin, close by a big log-walled bungalow on a lonely +slope of the Blue Ridge, now snugly frozen in by its winter snows, old +"Jubilee Jim" lay in a deep sleep. The moonlight, paling before the +coming dawn, came through the single window, lighting dimly the seamed +black face on the pallet, the sacks of flour and beans in the corner, a +side of bacon hung against the wall and strings of dried red-peppers +and bunches of herbs suspended from the rafters. On the floor before +the fire-place, in which a few red embers still glowed, snored a yellow +hound, gaunt and long of limb. +</P> + +<P> +There was no other house within miles of the place, but solitariness +was a habit with Jubilee Jim, and he did not miss human companionship. +Ten years before, the man who had chosen that wild spot and had built +the bungalow for occasional summer outings with his chosen comrades, in +which they might shoot and fish and live in primitive, health-giving +fashion, has ensconced the old negro there as general cook and +care-taker. He had built himself a tight little cabin close at hand +and remained there year in and year out to guard the building against +the frequent forest fires. In his pottering negro way he was a Jack of +many trades, in the summer cultivating a little cleared patch of +"garden truck" back of his cabin and in winter trapping small game, and +of evenings poring over his Bible, spelling out the words +laboriously—a gift he had learned many years before from some country +"missioner." Three or four times a year, leaving the lean hound in +possession, he trudged ten miles to the nearest village for what +supplies he needed. But on these occasions he felt no temptation to +remain with his kind, toiling back contentedly to his little cabin, his +hound, and his Bible. +</P> + +<P> +Suddenly, in the tense frozen silence, the great hound stirred and +lifted his head with a low guttural growl. His master woke and turned +on the creaking couch. +</P> + +<P> +"He-e-sh!" he said impatiently. "Whut fo' yo' want ter mek dat noise +en steal mah sleep!" +</P> + +<P> +At the remonstrance the lean tail thumped the board floor, but another +louder growl, deep and menacing, came from the shaggy throat. The old +negro lifted himself and listened. +</P> + +<P> +"Sumpen out dar!" muttered Jubilee Jim, straining his ears, for now he +caught the sound that had pricked the acuter hearing of the animal—a +curious, struggling sound like something wallowing in heavy snowdrifts. +</P> + +<P> +"Sumpen <I>big</I>!" Jubilee Jim's wrinkled face looked puzzled in the +moonlight and his eyes rolled to the wall where, on two wooden pegs, +sat an old-fashioned shot-gun. "Don' reck'n et's er bar!" he whispered +to the hound. "Ain't ben no bar eroun' hyuh en mawn thuhty yeahs!" He +got up and set his ear to the crack of the door. As he bent his +stooped frame, something lunged against the wall outside, and at the +sound the hound's bristles rose and he sent forth a fierce, rumbling +bay that rattled the window. +</P> + +<P> +"Et's er <I>man</I>!" said Jubilee Jim. He turned hastily to the rough-hewn +table and lighted a lantern; then snapping a chain into the dog's +collar and tethering him to the wall, he went to the door and lifted +its heavy bar. It opened inward and there half stumbled, half fell +across the threshold a snowy figure that collapsed at his feet. +</P> + +<P> +"Mah Lawd!" ejaculated the old man. "What he doin' hyuh?" +</P> + +<P> +With a sharp word to the leaping, raging hound, he dragged the +recumbent body inside, shut the door, and lighted a bundle of pine +knots in the fire-place. In the bright yellow light that flooded the +cabin he knelt down and examined the man who lay there. He drew off +the frosty fur cap from the close-clipped head. The coat was stiff +with frost so that he had trouble to unbutton and remove it, and the +shoes were broken. He took a knife and carefully cut them off from the +feet, noticing with quick pity that one ankle was swollen to twice its +natural size. +</P> + +<P> +"Reck'n yo' mos' froze ter def!" said Jubilee Jim. "En starved too!" +He rummaged on a shelf, found an iron skillet containing some broth and +set it close to the blazing wood. Then, he drew the limp figure upon +his couch and began to remove the clothing, now wet and clinging. +</P> + +<P> +As he opened the shirt, however, he started back with an exclamation. +</P> + +<P> +Well he knew what that jacket with its black and yellow-grey stripes +meant! Had he not often seen the sullen chain-gang breaking stone on +the mountain roads? The man who lay before him was a criminal in +desperate flight in stolen garments! He could tie him fast, +unconscious and helpless as he was, and leave the dog to guard him, +while he went down to the town for officers. But as he thought, +something else came to his mind. "Sick en in prison, en ye visited +me!" he muttered. "De Good Man he say dat. Dis hyuh man done been in +prison, en he moughty sick too. What dee Good Man do, Ah wondah? +Reck'n he ain' gwine lock him up, not 'treckly, nohow!" +</P> + +<P> +He saw a crimson stain that spread over the stripes. He touched it—it +was blood. +</P> + +<P> +Five minutes later, in the warming cabin, he was examining an opened +wound in the shoulder of the insensible man. He washed it carefully +and bound it up with some of the medicinal herbs that hung from the +rafters. This done, he took the skillet from the fire-place and with a +spoon forced a little of the hot liquid, drop by drop, between the +clenched teeth. Under these ministrations a semblance of life began to +return to the exhausted frame, and with it the chilled body rushed into +a fever. The head began to roll from side to side and the lips to +mutter indistinguishably. +</P> + +<P> +The hound had grown quiet now, and released from the chain, came to +sniff at the bunk. All at once he flung up his great head with a low +howl, then, crouching, licked the nerveless hand that hung down. +</P> + +<A NAME="img-282"></A> +<CENTER> +<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-282.jpg" ALT="All at once the hound flung up his great head with a low howl, then, crouching, licked the nerveless hand that hung down" BORDER="2"> +<H4 CLASS="h4center"> +All at once the hound flung up his great head with a low howl, <BR> +then, crouching, licked the nerveless hand that hung down +</H4> +</CENTER> + +<P> +Jubilee Jim looked in startled amaze, then seized the lantern and held +it close. "Who dis hyuh?" he said. +</P> + +<P> +As if at the challenge, the eyes in the white face opened and for a +single instant consciousness flickered there. "Jube—" said a weak +voice, "you—old—scoundrel—" Then the eyes closed and the mutterings +recommenced. +</P> + +<P> +The lantern rattled on the floor, as the old negro fell upon his knees +by the pallet. "Et's him!" he cried. "Dee Lawd he'p! Et's Marse +Harry hese'f!" He leaned and looked, with a painful bewilderment, at +the striped garments, the smooth, clipped scalp. "Huccome he got dem +close on?" he said to himself, half-fearfully. He stood a moment +looking from them to the pallet, then hastily rolled the sodden things +into a bundle and thrust it out of sight behind one of the sacks on the +floor. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Late the next afternoon the smoke from the stone chimney of the big +bungalow rose in a pale spiral into the keen windless air. Inside a +leaping fire of chestnut wood burned on the huge hearth and Harry lay +on a comfortable, blanket-covered couch in the corner. All day long +Jubilee Jim had watched beside him, as he tossed in delirium, now and +then touching the hot hand, laying cooling cloths on the fevered wound, +or feeding him with a spoon. He had not dared go down the mountain to +fetch a doctor, fearing to leave his patient so long alone. +</P> + +<P> +All day, as he watched, his slow brain had been busy with the +strangeness of that arrival—most of all with the mystery of the +striped clothes. To his simple intelligence, unvexed by the +complexities of life in communities, evil and good stood out in sharp +and irreconcilable contradistinction, and the garments were a harrowing +symbol. But deep in him was that profound, unreasoning belief—the +South's touching legacy of ante-bellum days—that trust and confidence +that is dog-like and unswerving. +</P> + +<P> +Towards evening, when the sick man became easier and he lay more +quietly, though his fever ran high, Jubilee Jim opened the door, and +stood looking out onto the lone, frosty hillside. The sun was going +down amid a flutter of scarlet scarfs and the marbled pines stood in +sombre clusters outlined like sentinels above the pansied twilight of +the snowy valley. At length he knelt down and with gnarled hands +clasped and eyes still on the colourful sky, he said: +</P> + +<P> +"O Lawd, Ah don' know what mek Marse Harry come hyuh lak dis. But yo' +knows what he done fo' ole Jube. Keep him yeahs en yeahs, feed him, en +when he so sick he gwine die, tek en git er doctah en cure him up. +When ah so old ah ain' no good no mo' he gimme dee lan' up hyuh fo' tuh +live on. Don' do nuffin cep'n watch dee house, en when he come +sometimes Ah cooks fo' him—das all! Ah don' know whaffuh he have on +dem wicked clo's—don' keer nuth'n erbout dat. Kase, Lawd, Marse Harry +ain' ben fo' tuh do nuth'n <I>bad</I>. Dey tek yo' darlin' son, dee Book +says, en put er crown o' tho'ns on he beautiful haid, en he ain' done +nuth'n 'tall cep'n good. Ah don' keer what Marse Harry have on; Ah +reck'n when he come lak dis, Yo' gwine he'p me he'p him—kase das what +he done fo' me!" +</P> + +<P> +As the earnest voice ceased, another spoke behind him. "Jube!" +</P> + +<P> +The old man rose hastily and came to the couch. "Yo' knows me ergen, +Marse Harry?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, Jube. When—did I get here?" +</P> + +<P> +"Dis mawnin', suh, befo' sun-up." +</P> + +<P> +"Was any one else here?" +</P> + +<P> +"No, Marse. Ain' ben nobody up hyuh sence dee fust snow-fall." +</P> + +<P> +Sevier was silent a moment, his eyes fixed on the black, affectionate +face. "Jube—bring me the things I—had on." +</P> + +<P> +The other crossed the room and came back with a suit which he laid on +the blanket. +</P> + +<P> +Sevier shook his head feebly. "Not those. The—others." +</P> + +<P> +Jubilee Jim hesitated, then turned and left the room. When he came +back the striped garments were in his hands. +</P> + +<P> +"Do you—know what—those are?" +</P> + +<P> +The faithful, old face turned a little away. "Ah reck'n dem am some +new-fangelly fishin'-close," he said, after a pause. +</P> + +<P> +A faint flicker of a smile touched the sick man's face. He understood. +"Put them—into—the fire." +</P> + +<P> +Sevier watched him, as he obeyed. He was very weak and his blood, +poisoned from the opened wound, was throbbing with fever. He was +preserving consciousness only by a great effort, but his gaze held +Jubilee Jim's steadily. +</P> + +<P> +"Jube, I want—no one to—know when I—came, or that I—am here—at all +... <I>No one</I> ... Do you—understand?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yas, suh." +</P> + +<P> +"I'm going—to be—sick. But—no matter—how sick I—no one is to—be +brought here ... not a doctor ... nor—any one." Harry's strength was +failing now, and the words trailed into indistinctness. +</P> + +<P> +"Yas, Marse Harry." +</P> + +<P> +"I ... trust you ... Jube!" +</P> + +<P> +That was all. He was gone again into the fevered delirium. +</P> + +<P> +All that night, and for many days and nights thereafter, old Jubilee +Jim, faithful to his word, struggled with death over the body of Harry +Sevier. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap36"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XXXVI +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +JUBILEE JIM'S JOURNEY +</H4> + +<P> +Harry stood in the doorway of the Bungalow, one hand shading his eyes, +looking down the twisting trail to where, far below, a dark blotch +toiled up the slope. During three days he had been alone, for Jubilee +Jim had gone upon a journey to the city where lay the old life from +which Harry had fled on the day he had ceased to be himself. The snows +were gone and an early spring day of azure and gold lay over the satiny +stillness of the folded hills. The fresh, pleasant air was full of the +whirr of birds and the smell of new bark and bursting buds, the slender +birches were unfurling the virginal green of their young leaves, and +here and there on the hillsides blossoms were showing. All nature was +fulfilling its annual mission of rebirth, audaciously triumphing over +autumn's death and winter's sepulture. +</P> + +<P> +The stalwart figure standing on the threshold was good to see. The +fever that had followed that terrible night of physical exhaustion had +been worsted at last by Jubilee Jim's homely medicaments and the balm +of peace and sleep. There had been days when Harry had been perilously +near the Great Adventure, but assiduous nursing and a splendid native +constitution had in the end conquered. The pure air of the balsam +forest and the comfort of the solitude had at length had their way with +him. The flesh had come back to the wasted frame, the old brightness +to the eye, and the flush of perfect health to the skin. Now, with his +curling hair and his crisp dark beard, trimmed as of old, he was again +the Harry Sevier of a year before—save that back of the eyes was a +steady something, a deep conscious strength that had come to him from +those bitter prison months when his soul had been tried in a fiery +furnace of pain. +</P> + +<P> +Sevier dropped his hand with a long sigh of relief, for at a turn in +the path, the dark blotch had resolved itself into the figure of a man, +followed by a great dog harnessed to a little cart. "It's Jube!" he +said aloud. "He's made the trip safely, and he's got the things!" +</P> + +<P> +This journey had been the outcome of much thought on Harry's part. +Lying there in the long weeks of convalescence, his mind had been busy +with the problem of the future. What to do? He could not stay forever +there on the mountain, a lonely hermit. Somewhere, he must take up +life again. When he had beguiled those dark prison moods with thoughts +of freedom, his imagination had pictured flight to some distant country +where, under a borrowed name, he might find a refuge, barren as that +refuge might be of all life's sweetness. Freedom now was his. Should +he put the past forever behind him, make his disappearance good, and +without more ado drop out of sight and sound forever? All his instinct +rebelled against this drastic solution, this cavalier denial of life +and its mental exercise for a career of empty futility. +</P> + +<P> +What remained then? To go back to the life he had left behind him on +the day he ceased to be Harry Sevier? +</P> + +<P> +Why not? He was free—free to be himself again. Only one, beside +Echo, had known that he and the captured house-breaker were +identical—that was Craig. And Craig had been taken from his path. +And who else would connect Harry Sevier, the lawyer, the club-man of +well-known and reputable past, the favourite of drawing-rooms—who +could ever associate him with a tawdry burglar and desperate convict +who had escaped from a penitentiary in another State? Once more +bearded and eye-glassed, without scar or mark to point resemblance or +beckon identification, recognition would be the wildest improbability. +</P> + +<P> +Once, as he bettered, Jubilee Jim had gone to the valley below to +return with a bundle of back-copies of the County newspaper, and as +Harry pored over these avidly, the old life had cried to him from every +line. The movement that had been called into life by the Civic Club, +in the hour when he had made the first speech of his life that had been +untinctured with any personal ambition or selfish motive, had gained +momentum; it had taken on party organisation and would be a force to be +reckoned with in the coming campaign. On that day he had had his first +taste of the joy of battle for a principle, and he longed inexpressibly +to throw the power, of which he was now more than ever conscious, into +the struggle for the new ideal. +</P> + +<P> +Suppose he went back, and Craig recovered the mind that was now in +eclipse—recovered and remembered? What then? +</P> + +<P> +His safety lay in the fact that no one possessed the clue to the +unthinkable reality. Craig, if he recovered, would possess this, and +if he in his right senses denounced him, the accusation, spectacular +and incredible as it might seem, would have to be seriously met. And +he could not meet it, for it would be true! So long as Craig lived, +the harrowing danger would always be there—a veritable Sword of +Damocles! Would not his future be forever a dubious adventure, haunted +always by a torturing shadow and the dread of discovery and shame? In +fancy he saw himself seized—to be suddenly confronted with that +shameful thing, to face a cloud of witnesses, be dragged back to a +cell, despised and broken, once more a convict—that, or else flight, +cringing and furtive, with the hounds of the law in cry! +</P> + +<P> +And yet, did not the chances that Craig would not regain his faculties +vastly preponderate? The newspapers Harry had read had not contained +the item chronicling Craig's journey to Buda-Pesth, and recovery was +not an imminent possibility to his mind. A year had gone by, and all +the skill that wealth could invoke had no doubt been applied, and +vainly. Even if sometime he to some extent recovered, it was more than +likely that his memory of that fatal night in his library would be +impaired. So Harry told himself. +</P> + +<P> +Over and over he followed the trail of painful reflection, in a vicious +circle that centred always in the one thought that sent his mind +shrinking in upon itself—Echo. What would that old life be to him, +denied its old relations? He and she were nothing to one another any +more: she was only a stinging memory. And he would see her, meet her, +talk with her, always with that sickening pretence of ignorance between +them, in a painful hypocrisy, till she should love and marry—some one +else than him! A wave of sick revolt had surged over him at the +thought. What to him was freedom, even life itself, if each hour held +the thumb-screw and the rack? +</P> + +<P> +Thus his resolve had swung back and forth, pendulum-like, tiring itself +with the endless question, and much thinking had brought him no nearer +a solution. Meanwhile time had been passing, and pending final +decision it was necessary for him in some measure to pick up the old +threads. There were responsibilities which he had not yet laid down. +There were his apartment, his servants, his office—for though +provision of a sort had fortunately been made for a time, his affairs +must now be put upon a securer basis which would permit of his taking +whatever course should seem best. So, finally, he had sent Jubilee Jim +on the long journey, after thoroughly schooling the old man on the part +he was to play. By him he had sent a letter to his man of business, +with minute instructions which would enable his affairs to be put in +order, another to his bank directing the sale of certain securities for +cash to be held at his instant demand, a third to Suzuki, his Japanese +valet, instructing him to send clothes, and other needful articles, his +private papers and a few books—for solace in this solitude until he +should have determined what to do. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +"Good, Jube!" said Harry, as the old negro came into the room carrying +the big bundle from his little cart. "You got everything, then?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yas, Marse Harry. Ah brung dem all—dee papers, en dee close, en dee +money f'um dee bank, en all. Moughty glad ah got dis 'yer ole dawg +erlong, wid sech er heap o' money on me! Reck'n Ah spent er lot—had +tuh pay er qua'tah bof ways fo' him tuh ride on dee baggage-cyah: +wouldn't let him in dee smokah nohow. Dey argyfied he too big." +</P> + +<P> +Harry spread out the clothing on the table—suits of fashionable cut, +speaking loudly and insistently of the old life. Those he wore at the +moment had once been modish too, but their one-time owner would no +longer have recognised them, for they were threadbare and as battered +as the home-made moccasins on Harry's feet. At the first opportunity +he purposed anonymously to send John Stark double their value, with +certain articles the garments had contained—watch, cigarette-case, +cuff-links and what-not—now wrapped in a little package in a safe +hiding-place. +</P> + +<P> +Harry turned. "Well, Jube, tell me all about it. When you got off the +train, where did you go first?" +</P> + +<P> +"To de bank fust. Man dah was moughtily s'prised tuh git yo' lettah. +'Reck'n Mistah Sevier gwine tuh Africy er sumwhah,' he say." +</P> + +<P> +"Where did you go next?" +</P> + +<P> +"To Marse Dick Brent's office—whah dey meks dee newspapahs. Foun' him +settin' dah wid er pipe in he mouf, lookin' jes' ez nachul ez life, +same ez when he up hyuh wid yo'-all dat time. Ah cert'n'y glad tuh see +Marse Brent, en he ax pow'ful lot o' questions 'bout yo'. 'Mah lan'!' +he say; 'Tuh think he up in dat ole mount'n all dis God's-blessed time, +loafin' eroun' en gittin' fat ez er buzzard, when we-alls is wu'kin' +ouah souls tuh deff, en polytics gittin' red-hot. Whaffoh he do dat? +When he come up dar, Jube?' 'Well,' Ah says, 'Ah ain' got no haid fo' +gogerfy, Marse Brent, but Ah reck'n et mus' a ben las' fall sometime. +En den Marse Harry ben moughty sick in dee fall en wintah.' 'Sick!' he +say. 'Yo' ole rascal, yo' ain' got no mo' sense dan er snake have +hips! Why yo' don' sen' no word home erbout it?' 'Marse Harry he say +not tuh,' I say. 'Clar' he ain' gwine be no trubbil tuh nobody. So Ah +doctahs him en nusses him, en aftah while he git all right ergen. On'y +he so fon' o' de ole bungalow he jes' cain' bear tuh leave et.' 'Sho!' +he say. 'When Ah thinks o' dis hyuh ole wuk, Ah reck'n Ah don' blame +him none.' Den he tek me down tuh yo' place fo' dee clo's en +things—walkin' erlong wid me jes' lak Ah been yo'-se'f. 'Moughty lot +er folkses sorry yo' Marse Harry ain' erbout no mo', Jube,' he say. +'Speakin' o' dat,' he say, 'dahs one o' dem ar' folkses, Ah reck'n, +comin' down dee street dis minute!' Ah looks up en Ah sees er moughty +pretty young lady, tall en white lak er big lily. 'Dat Miss Echo +Allen,' he say." +</P> + +<P> +Harry turned away abruptly and looked out of the open doorway. His +face had paled. +</P> + +<P> +"Marse Brent tek off he hat, en he say, 'Miss Echo, what yo' reck'n dee +las' spectaculous news is? Harry Sevier been up at ole Blue Mount'n +all dis yeah!' Well, suh, seems lak dat lady so s'prised she mos' +faint right on dee spot. Den dee colah come back in huh cheeks en she +laugh—moughty happifyed laugh, but somehow, et got er little cry en it +too, sumwhah. She look at me, en huh eyes jes' de coloh o' er +cat-buhd's aig. 'Dis 'yer Jubilee Jim Sandahs,' Marse Brent say, 'whut +cook fo' Sevier's outfit up dah, en he also er numbah one nuss, kase +dee young loafah ben sick. Bet yo' ben ovah-feedin' him, Jube.' Miss +Echo she walk down dee street wid we-all, clar tuh yo' house. Ax how +yo' is now, how yo' look, is yo' got thinnah—fifty hundud things she +ax erbout. Ole Jube he sho' reck'n dat lady think er pow'ful sight o' +yo', Marse Harry!" +</P> + +<P> +Harry choked back an exclamation of misery. Every word had been like a +hot needle thrust into a quivering nerve. Her face, with its ivory +clearness, under its wonderful whorl of red-gold hair—her eyes deep as +sky-mirroring pools in late sun-light—her laugh, her voice! He +suddenly seemed to feel the actual touch of her hand in his, as vastly +sweet as the shadow of rose-leaves. +</P> + +<P> +"Marse Harry," said Jubilee Jim, humbly, "dee ole man don' know whuffoh +yo' come hyuh dis time, er whuffoh yo' so long 'way f'om home. Ain' +mah biz'ness, Ah knows. But dee mount'n ain' no place fo' folks tuh +stay, cep'n fo' ole Jube whut lib hyuh allus. En Marse Harry, down dah +in dee city, ev'y one jes' waitin' en watchin' fo' yo'. Marse Brent, +en ... en dee pretty lady, en all!" +</P> + +<P> +There was a long silence. At last Harry turned from the doorway. +</P> + +<P> +"Thank you, Jube," he said in a low voice. "Now—tell me about Aunt +Judy." +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap37"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XXXVII +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +THE CALL +</H4> + +<P> +In the big living-room, now flooded with the mountain sunshine that +streamed in through the open door, Richard Brent leaned to knock the +ashes from his pipe against the end of the hewn bench on which he sat. +Then he looked up at Sevier standing in front of the empty fire-place. +</P> + +<P> +"Well," he asked, "what do you think of it? How's that for a chance, +eh?" +</P> + +<P> +Sevier nodded. One hand was tugging at his dark beard, the other was +clasping and unclasping nervously behind him. "The new organisation +can't win, of course," he answered quietly. "Politically speaking it's +too young, and it lacks leaders. But it can make a strong showing, I +should think." +</P> + +<P> +Brent laughed as he explored his capacious tobacco-pouch. "Especially +if the platform is built wide enough." He pointed to a newspaper he +had brought with him, that lay beside him. "That editorial of mine +hits the nail squarely on the head. There is one issue and only one +which will draw in all the elements opposed to the party that now +rules—that is the liquor issue. That <I>must</I> go in!" +</P> + +<P> +A quick gleam crossed Harry's face. None but he knew what liquor had +done for him, no eye but his might see the pitiful trail it had dragged +across his burnished life! +</P> + +<P> +Brent laughed again. "It's strange that they don't see it!" he said. +"Can't they deduce anything. Look at the growth of similar movements +in other states. Do they really believe that any genuine +good-government party can sit in the same saddle with John Barleycorn? +That's why the thing has always failed in the past—compromise, +temporise, fusion. Fiddlesticks! why can't they take the bull by the +horns? They would, too, if there was some one who would crystallise +the thing in their minds." He shot a keen side-glance at Harry. "When +you made that Civic Club speech last year," he said shrewdly, "I picked +you for the Peter the Hermit of the new Gospel. And then, confound it! +you bury yourself in the wilds up here, while every one thinks you've +gone abroad, and I have to pack my rheumatic bones twenty miles on an +infernal burro, to dig you out of your shell!" +</P> + +<P> +Harry's eyes had been absently fixed on the spread-out newspaper. +Something in the other's words, in his manner, caught him. A colour +came to his cheeks. "Dig me out of my shell?" he repeated. "What do +you mean by that?" +</P> + +<P> +Brent looked at him intently for a long second. During the past year +he, like others, had wondered at his friend's long absence. At first +he had put it down to natural need of vacation and the other's failure +to communicate with his friends had seemed significant of no more than +the mild eccentricity which had always flavoured his actions. Only +later the thought had come to him that Harry's absence might be due to +an affair of the heart. This to him had pointed unerringly to Echo +Allen, and conviction had leaped to a certainty on the day when he had +seen her reception of Jubilee Jim's news of Harry's whereabouts. Had +it been a lovers' quarrel? he had wondered. If so, and she had sent +him away, she had repented of it, that was manifest. The news of +Harry's whereabouts, in his mind, had dovetailed with his knowledge of +the political situation and its need of leadership, and the second day +thereafter had found him on horseback, following the difficult trail to +Harry's mountain eyrie. He had come to grips now with his errand. He +sat suddenly upright. +</P> + +<P> +"Sevier," he said, "you've got to do it. You are the only one who can. +You've got to speak at that convention on the seventeenth and nail that +plank into the platform hard and fast!" +</P> + +<P> +Harry made a quick gesture, then left the fireplace and began to stride +up and down the room. During that silent, insistent gaze it had come +to him with a strange glow of excitement what Brent intended to say. +His heart was beating quickly, and a host of conflicting emotions were +rioting in his mind. The allusion to his speech of a year ago had +brought a throb of the old ecstasy of power—that power which he knew +was his now, and in greater degree. If he only might use it for this +good purpose! +</P> + +<P> +Brent, looking at him, uncrossed his long legs with a smile. "I +agree," he said, "that we may not be able to win this time, but it will +start it off right, and it will be a good fight. I'll bet you what you +like that within a week—if that plank is rightly hammered in—the +Good-Government Clubs all over the State will be wiring allegiance!" +</P> + +<P> +He got up, his lank, nervous figure braced with interest. +</P> + +<P> +"And what if we do lose this Governorship? It will be the first real +nail in John Barleycorn's coffin in this State!" +</P> + +<P> +Sevier had sat down on the blanketed couch. His gaze went past the +eager face before him and lingered on the sweet, warm world outside, +with all its suggestions of new growth and virile strength. But what +he really saw was very far away. Was he a poor coward then, to shrink +from a woman's smile, a woman's eyes? He put his face in his hands. +Possibilities were beckoning to him, dead things springing up alive, +old longings, ambitions, appetences plucking at him. +</P> + +<P> +For a time Brent did not speak. He had turned away and stood in the +sunny doorway, looking down the trail. At length he faced about. +</P> + +<P> +"Sevier," he said quickly. "What do you say? Will you do it?" +</P> + +<P> +Harry looked up. The colour had faded from his face, but it was alight +with a new energy and resolution. The call had found him, and at that +moment the harrowing dread—the problem itself, which had shown so +imminent—seemed to have grown dim, to have drawn into the far distance. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," he answered slowly, "yes, Brent. I will come." +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap38"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XXXVIII +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +THE CHALLENGE +</H4> + +<P> +Looking back upon that day, Sevier was often to wonder whether indeed +he had missed Fate's purpose, and blinded by a personal ambition, had +set its plan at naught. For that instant's decision was to prove the +key to a series of fateful doings which bore him on, irresistibly, into +a line of action from which, deliberately, he must have shrunk. +</P> + +<P> +But having set his hand, it was characteristic of him that he did not +falter. It had required resolution to put Echo and his relations with +her into the background, but he accomplished even this, and he allowed +no thought of possible complications to affect his mental serenity. +His face was composed and determined as he descended from the train, at +dusk of the sixteenth, at the familiar city station, to find—as Brent +had arranged—his motor waiting for him, with Bob, his chauffeur, +wearing a broad grin of welcome, at its door. So pleasantly habitual +it all seemed, so sharply remembered was each sight and sound as the +car sped through the glimmering traffic, that almost he could have +believed the past year, full as it had been of pain, a vacuous dream +and that no hideous hiatus had lain between the then and now. +</P> + +<P> +He was sensible for the first time of the intense mental strain he had +been labouring under since his sluggish prison routine had opened into +this dubious freedom—the tension of his struggle, the instinct of +impending catastrophe, and the ghastly doubt of himself where Echo was +concerned. The lassitude and inaction of the Bungalow had added to +this strain. The relief now of movement and action brought surcease, +and a feeling of present confidence, if not of definite security. +Before he reached his apartment, he was sufficiently himself to give +the welcome he received from Aunt Judy and from Suzuki a feeling of +usualness. Brent, with two or three others who saw eye to eye with +him, so far as the exigencies of the political situation were +concerned, spent a part of the later evening with him and the talk +furnished the final tonic—if any had been needed—to brace him for the +task that awaited. That night, for the first time in many months, he +slept the deep, fortifying sleep of utter and dreamless unconsciousness. +</P> + +<P> +With the morning he felt no misgiving or shadow of self-doubt. His +mind temporarily was clear and untroubled, all of the vexing problem +was pushed, by the singleness of his purpose, into the unknown future. +By his express wish, his arrival had not been published, and, except +for a few of its leaders with whom Brent had conferred, the circles of +the convention, then in session in the biggest auditorium the city +boasted, were no more aware than were the hosts of his friends, of his +coming. He spent the morning alone in his room, sitting movelessly +hour after hour, marshalling his ideas, assembling his forces, stirred +as he had never before been stirred by the quick suggestion of a living +issue and an unrivalled opportunity. +</P> + +<P> +He lunched quietly alone with Brent in a private room at the club, and +immediately afterward drove with him to the hall. Throughout the +morning the platform had been under discussion; the debate was now +about finished. It was the psychological moment for his effort. +</P> + +<P> +As Harry stood silent before the sea of faces, in the instant that +followed his recognition and introduction, he was conscious of a tense +and vital concentration that swept from him the last vestige of +self-consciousness. With his first measured words, too, the outline +which he had pondered during the morning vanished utterly from his +brain. He remembered nothing save the one thing he had come to do, saw +with his mind's eye only the monstrous evil against which he stood. +</P> + +<P> +Words came to him in a flood—words magically compelling, that burned +and quivered in their intense appeal. For an hour he held the interest +of the great assembly as no orator had done, sketching with hard and +pitiless directness the ramifications of the grim traffic that blasted +whatsoever it touched, that knew no social bar, before which the +magnate's mansion and the labourer's tenement were as one, against +which no bolt or chain—save it be one wrought by the law of a +Sovereign Commonwealth—might avail. +</P> + +<P> +In his words was no tang of the study, none of the didactic methods of +the arm-chair student, no array of statistics. What he expressed had +been seared upon his soul, in inextinguishable letters and as he spoke +shooting pictures etched themselves as if on some quivering panorama in +his brain: he saw the black bottle in the wall-cabinet of his inner +office—the hidden sanctuary where he had signed away his talent and +linked his years to the demon of remorse: he saw the representative of +the great Corporation, whose power flowed from that traffic, holding in +his merciless hand the happiness of a woman that had been dearer than +his own life: he saw the cringing hatred in the eyes of Paddy the +Brick, the furtive drink-lined faces of the jail corridors. And in his +passionate denunciation, he called upon those who heard him to do their +part to rid the state of its Master and to set it free. Lastly, in a +peroration which carried all before it, he pictured a community from +which the unendurable stain had been forever wiped away, the pitfalls +of its youth filled up, the shame of its prisons lightened—a community +ruled no longer by King Alcohol, but by the Genius of the Home, to +which freedom no longer stood for ribald license and self-harm, but for +the Common Good. +</P> + +<P> +He stopped amid a dense silence—the truest tribute to real +oratory—then with a great burst, the storm of approval came. +</P> + +<P> +It filled the hall with electric feeling, surging in waves that +overtopped all decorum and made the hour significant and momentous. +Near him Harry saw the party leaders, among them Judge Allen, +newly-elected President of the Civic Club; they showed a singular +self-assurance overlaid by vivid excitement. In the galleries were +banks of feminine faces, tier on tier, merged in a tumultuous +hand-clapping like silver rain. Below, the house was on its feet, a +sea of waving flags and handkerchiefs. +</P> + +<P> +The tumult swelled, then died away to pulsing band-music and in the +subsidence, Brent leaned over Harry's shoulder to give him the quick +pressure of a hand—words could not have said so much. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +It was not until the convention had adjourned for an hour's recess that +Harry could escape from the congratulations that poured upon him where +he sat. While he spoke, the sense of mastery and domination had +possessed him; now he was feeling the inevitable revulsion, and with it +came the fading of his confidence and the relifting of the old +sickening question. +</P> + +<P> +It had surged back before the applause had died away, the moment he had +released his mind from the clamping resolution of his purpose, +springing upon him like a cunning enemy who had dogged him in the +shadow. His roseate speculations of the Bungalow seemed now but hollow +wraiths that had mocked him with an unrealisable promise. Could he +ever for a moment have cheated himself into forgetfulness of the +<I>impasse</I> that lay there? +</P> + +<P> +With Brent beside him, he pushed his way to the foyer. There the press +was thickened and they were blocked in a corner by the stream of people +pouring from the galleries, from which position Harry found himself +nodding across to enthusiastic greetings of old acquaintances. +</P> + +<P> +"Good heavens!" fumed Brent, impatiently. "We'll never get out at this +rate. Let's try the other door." Harry turned with him, seeking a way +through the diminishing crowd. Then, abruptly he stopped. Near at +hand, her side-face turned toward him, was Echo. Her delicate colour +was heightened by an unwonted flush and her eyes shone softly under the +curling golden waves of her hair. +</P> + +<P> +Gazing in a confusion that was almost panic, Harry felt, with a burning +sense of helplessness and cowardice, the impossibility of his position. +The sight of her was like a cooling stream to a famished wanderer in +the desert. It called to him with a thousand voices, lifting before +him every sweet reminder of vanished things. She had not yet seen him, +and as the crowd swept her slowly closer, he felt to the full his own +blindness and egregious self-assurance that had made this plunge into +the old current seem possible. He watched her with a fascinated +intensity. She was speaking to some one beside her, her glance +wandering. It shifted, then was raised, as if by very attraction, to +his face. +</P> + +<P> +He saw recognition spring across it like a shaft of sunlight, as with a +quick impulse she started forward—then her arm caught itself, as it +were, half extended. He felt himself chill in every nerve, the air was +breathless. Mechanically his hand touched hers. +</P> + +<P> +"You have been gone a year," she said, in a low, uneven voice. +</P> + +<P> +Harry's very thought seemed suspended. "Is it—so long?" he answered. +</P> + +<P> +He scarcely knew what he said: the reply was a mere involuntary +expression of habit, a conventional phrase to fill the moment's need. +He could not know that the very repression with which he was holding +himself against the quick thrill of her touch made the words lifeless +and inconsequential. +</P> + +<P> +To Echo, however, in the tremulous gladness that had filled her at the +knowledge of his return, and the exaltation of the hour, the reply, +deserved as at heart she felt it to be, was like a blow in the face. A +startled paleness swept up her cheeks like a wave, blotting their hue +and misting the clear April of her eyes. She turned half-away, toward +her companion, and the next moment the eddying crowd had come between. +</P> + +<P> +On the hurrying pavement Brent dropped his hand on Sevier's shoulder. +"I'm not going to congratulate you," he said. "I'm going to +congratulate the new party. I'm off to the sanctum to write my +editorial while it's red hot. You'll come back for the other session, +I suppose. They're liable to nominate to-night." +</P> + +<P> +"No," replied Harry. "I must get away from the crowd somewhere." +</P> + +<P> +Brent caught the lassitude of his tone. "Better walk yourself tired," +he counselled, "and then turn in. You'll be all right to-morrow." +</P> + +<P> +They clasped hands and parted. +</P> + +<P> +For a time Sevier walked aimlessly, choosing the less frequented +thoroughfares, alone at last to think. He had done his best. Whether +or not it would accomplish what Brent had hoped, he had made the +strongest effort of which he was capable. The meeting with Echo had +shaken him by its very unexpectedness, and had shown him how bitterly +hard was to be his struggle with himself. In that instant of their +encounter he had realised his own weakness. +</P> + +<P> +Through the long, fading afternoon he walked on and on, past the +outskirts of the city, on into the peaceful willow-green quiet of the +country, where paved streets gave place to meandering red roads and the +air was sweet with the delicate fragrance of blossoming fruit-trees. +He sat an hour on the violet-blurred grass above the silver-looping +river where he had often fished as a boy. All his life he had loved +that gold-tinted, dream-shadowed valley. But now the soft wild clamour +of birds, the multifold perfume of the fields, the errant plum-petals +swimming in the breeze, the long-armed trees reaching out over the +darkling water, called to him in vain. He scarcely saw the far, blue, +hill-brushed horizon unfurl its pageant cloud-clusters to hide the sun, +where it hastened, in purple toga, to greet the soft-eyed night. +</P> + +<P> +What Spartan career had he been planning for himself? He loved her, +desired her, still. He realised it with a stab of self-contempt. And +loving her, could he see her day by day, meet her, talk with her—cold +and empty words meaning less than nothing—with his heart crying to +hers: "Thus far but no further! Because I loved you once I wear a +shameful brand on my forehead, but my arms may never enfold you, your +lips never lie on my lips, your heart beat against mine!—Never, never, +never!"—could flesh and blood be capable of this? Better to go, while +there was yet time, somewhere, anywhere, so it be out of her world. +Under the deep evening sky, a gulf of gold, he turned city-ward again, +still painfully absorbed with his thoughts—a dark tangle of anguish +and doubt and longing. +</P> + +<P> +As he neared his house speeding urchins were crying newspaper extras, +and more than once he heard his name in the shouted, dislocated +phrases. His speech! The swan's-song of Harry Sevier! +</P> + +<P> +He let himself into his apartment with his latch-key and wearily +switched on the lights. He suddenly remembered that he had eaten +nothing since noon and realised that he was wretchedly tired and spent. +A pencilled note, with the superscription in Brent's jerky hand, lay on +the table. He took it up and opened it. +</P> + +<P> +Then suddenly he gave an inarticulate cry of amaze—of actual fright. +He was staring at this message, written an hour before: +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent" STYLE="margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%"> +<I>Anti-liquor plank adopted. You were nominated for Governor on the +first ballot at eight o'clock.</I> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap39"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XXXIX +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +THE JAILBIRD +</H4> + +<P> +To every man come portentous moments of decision so packed with fate +that all that his after life may hold of pain or joy, seen with the +clearer view of later knowledge, may well have hung upon the issue. +Harry's one greatest moment of crisis had been when he stood in the +doorway of Cameron Craig's house, with that midnight alarm pulsing +about him—when he had chosen the course that meant safety for Echo at +such bitter cost to himself. The moment when he confronted the blunt +fact of his nomination was wellnigh as significant. +</P> + +<P> +Such a possibility had never occurred to him. He saw himself now, +first with bewilderment, then with passionate resentment, in a +predicament as unprecedented as it was unescapable. He had not even +had the option of declining the nomination. By now his name, as the +new party's choice, was darting over the clicking wires to the remotest +borders of the country. How could he accept it? He, who might at any +hour, for all he knew, be faced with a charge from which (if, indeed, +flight still lay open) he must flee ignominiously, like a thief in the +night—which, in the eyes of the law, he was! Yet how evade the thing +thus thrust upon him? After his speech, in which he had championed the +new cause so ardently, could he throw ridicule upon the organisation, +make its leaders—men whom he had known and respected all his +life—laughing-stocks, throw doubt upon his own intentions, and make +his action of to-day show forth before all as a flamboyant bid for +popular applause, the gallery-appeal of a pitiful <I>flâneur</I> and +attitudinarian, who had no mind to link himself with an inevitable +defeat at the polls? +</P> + +<P> +As Harry stood in the pleasant, lighted room, with Brent's pencilled +note in his hand, a strange thought obtruded itself to grow slowly over +his confused imaginings. Behind it all was there not the same wise +Intention whose outlines he had thought he distinguished in his bitter +prison experience? And was he, in faithless presumption, to deny that +over-rule, and vanish cavalierly into some sluggish back-current of +life? The same fate that had turned Paddy the Brick's pellet of lead +the single hair's-breadth that had saved him, perhaps, from the +scaffold, had rendered his enemy, at least for the present, incapable +of harming him. And this part of his problem belonged to the present. +Why had the cards so fallen, unless in that intricate Plan, it was +meant that he should now give his hand to this work? He had trusted +fate far—might he not trust it further? Though the party that had +called him to carry its standard into the fight was destined to +failure, it was working for the future, and some other campaign—long +after the worst that could befall had come to him—would bring its +principles success. He would have done his part! +</P> + +<P> +So, for good or ill to himself, Harry made his momentous decision, and +as if it had been a signal, at the same instant there came the quick, +insistent ringing of the telephone on his desk. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +The next few days were days of ungrudging labour on Harry's part of +conferences with the state leaders—for Brent's prophecy had been +fulfilled and Good-Government Clubs throughout the state had placed +their local machinery in the new party's control. These earlier +meetings were, for the most part, in Harry's own apartment, or in the +library of Midfields, since Judge Allen was chairman of the Committee +on Organisation. On none of these latter occasions had he seen Echo, +nor, to his relief, had he met her elsewhere. He gave himself no +relaxation, bending all the energies of his reawakened being to the +task of detail, and the mapping out of the campaign which he was +entering. Whatever his apprehension and trepidation, he had learned +his real weight in the hour of his great speech and the sense of power, +linked with extraordinary and tangible opportunity, thrilled and +dominated him. +</P> + +<P> +There came an evening, however, after a day of more than usual +concentration, when he felt that he must relax. He had dined at the +hotel with some of the party's out-of-town lieutenants, but excused +himself early and chose to dismiss his motor and to walk home afoot, +craving the lightness and gaiety of the jostling streets and gleaming +windows. +</P> + +<P> +Presently he found himself passing a theatre-front and remembered that +Brent had pressed him to make one of a box-party there that same +evening. At the time he had left the matter open, pleading the dinner +engagement, but now it occurred to him suddenly that an hour of lights +and music would be welcome. It was the intermission after the first +act and men were flocking into the doors, chatting and laughing. The +spirit of frivolity attracted him and he entered with the rest. +</P> + +<P> +The orchestra was playing—a Bohemian medley of uneven harmonies and +wildly plaintive alternations, strung, as on a thread, on the +airily-fantastic <I>motif</I> of Dvorak's <I>Humoresque</I>, and the pirouetting +music seemed to belong to the flippant and shallow yet alluring +interior, with its plenteous gold-leaf and dark blue draperies +embroidered in peacock-feathers—the breath of a life of laughter, of +careless amusement, of joy in the present. Harry felt his spirits lift +and lighten at the grateful slackening of tension which the <I>mise en +scene</I> created, and he bowed and smiled easily when the audience +testified its recognition, as he followed the attendant along the side +wall, by a hushed hand-clapping which ran across the rows of seats. +</P> + +<P> +With his hand parting the rear curtains of the box, however, he halted +irresolutely—its occupants were Mrs. Spottiswoode, Brent, Lawrence +Treadwell and Echo. For an instant resentment stirred in him; he +guessed that Brent, albeit with the best intentions in the world, had +planned this meeting. Then he squared his shoulders and entered. In +another moment he had greeted Mrs. Spottiswoode and was bowing over +Echo's hand. +</P> + +<P> +The men had risen. "Here is the Candidate!" exclaimed Brent, laughing. +"Mrs. Spottiswoode was just about to make me a wager that you wouldn't +descend to such triviality." +</P> + +<P> +Pretty Mrs. Spottiswoode smiled as she closed her fan. "If I had, I +shouldn't begrudge the loss," she said. "You've missed the first act, +Mr. Sevier, but then openings are always dull, aren't they?" Treadwell +shook hands with him with frank friendliness. Politically he belonged +to the party in power, but his liking for Harry was sincere and of +long-standing. +</P> + +<P> +The lights in the house were fading and the orchestra had swung into a +soft and measured air. The rustle and chatter among the seats stilled: +the curtain was rising. After the few words of greeting, Harry dropped +into the vacant chair behind Echo's, in the rear of the enclosure. He +had a feeling that again a satiric chance had snatched the reins of +conduct from his hands. His unseeing gaze was set upon the crowded +tiers beneath, but he was conscious of nothing but that small, +delicately-shaped head like one in a Greek frieze, that clear-cut +profile softly tinged by the dim rose-lamps of the box, the clasped, +unringed hands, the lacy sweep of the pale evening-dress silhouetted +against the curtain. Beyond the range of his vision manikins came and +went upon the stage, speaking meaningless words. At the other side of +the box Mrs. Spottiswoode was whispering some humorous adventure to +Treadwell and Brent, whose heads were bent toward her. Everything else +seemed unreal and far-away, and he and Echo the only realities in a +chapter of banality. +</P> + +<P> +He became conscious all at once that her head was turned toward him, +and as though by magnetic compulsion his own eyes looked into hers. +</P> + +<P> +"I want to say something to you." The words were the merest whisper on +her parted lips, yet he heard. He drew his chair nearer till his bent +head was at her shoulder. "Yes," he said. +</P> + +<A NAME="P316"></A> + +<P> +Her lips trembled, but she spoke in a clear undertone, audible only to +him, which faltered the merest trifle: +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know whether—now—it makes any difference to you," she said. +"But I—I was not myself when I—wrote you that note, the day you—went +away. There was a reason why I—acted as I did. You—" +</P> + +<P> +The low voice failed. There had been in the hesitant words failing +pride and shame, mingled with the love that had been so long denied—a +revelation which welled from the pure, outspoken honesty of heart that +compelled it, demanding, at all odds, so far as he was concerned, +openness and understanding. The shaken voice, the tremulous lips, the +moon-soft fire of her eyes and the faint scent of her clothing, all the +sweet suggestions of her presence were crying aloud to Harry, tempting +him with a vision of promise. What if she had failed him—then? What +if that courage he had dreamed, put to the touch, had shown but +cowardice, that love of him a secondary thing to her? She was what he +wanted—to yield himself to her arms as a swimmer to the sea! As much +as she loved any one—save herself—she loved him! Was not a half loaf +better than no bread? The icy barrier of reserve which he had reared +crumbled down, and he felt the thing he had tried to imprison leap up, +savage and not to be denied. His groping hand went out and touched her +arm. +</P> + +<P> +"Echo!" he whispered hoarsely. "Echo—" +</P> + +<P> +His voice died in his throat. Her hands in her lap held the theatrical +programme, and words in heavy black-letter—the title of the +piece—were staring up at him from the white paper— +</P> + +<P CLASS="t3"> +THE JAILBIRD<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +In the shadow, he felt his limbs suddenly trembling. With a kind of +fascination his gaze, for the first time since his entrance, lifted to +the stage. +</P> + +<P> +It was set as a long flagged corridor of vertical steel bars, into +which doors were let at regular intervals, and behind each door showed +a bare, forbidding room, furnished with two iron cots, one above the +other, and two wooden stools. As he gazed in consternation, a bell +clangored and along the corridor came tramping a line of men clad in +dingy stripes, pallid face close to shabby shoulder, one knee rising +and falling to the damnable rhythm of the prison lock-step. +</P> + +<P> +Harry felt an algid chill creep over him. He sat upright, his whole +body rigid, each detail of the significant picture stamping itself upon +his quivering perception. Midway of the line a turnkey unlocked a door +in the barred wall and two links of the human chain detached themselves +and entered—one stooped and crafty and cringing; the other clean-cut +and erect with no stamp of vice upon his face. The clanging bolt shot +home, the line moved off. Then, in the silence of the house the comely +figure leaned against the bars, and John Stark's voice—or was it his, +Harry Sevier's?—cried in broken agony: +</P> + +<P> +"And I am innocent—innocent!" +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +As the curtain descended on the act, amid a crash of orchestral music, +Mrs. Spottiswoode turned to Harry with a little shrug. +</P> + +<P> +"It <I>is</I> moving, really, isn't it? But how <I>terribly</I> unnatural! Of +course in real life nothing like that could happen to an innocent man. +What do you think, Mr. Treadwell?" +</P> + +<P> +But Treadwell did not answer at once. He had turned in surprise to the +rear of the box, where a youth in a grey silver-buttoned uniform had +parted the curtains. The messenger was looking at Brent, who rose and +went to him. +</P> + +<P> +"I beg pardon, sir," the boy said in a low voice, "but they told me at +the box-office you were here. Will you please come over to the club? +Something is the matter. Perhaps Mr. Sevier will come too." +</P> + +<P> +Brent looked at him—there was agitation in the youthful face. He +turned. +</P> + +<P> +"Will you ladies excuse Sevier and me for a few minutes?" he said. "I +dare say we shall be back before the curtain goes up again." +</P> + +<P> +At the words Harry had risen also, with a quick relief at this summons, +whatever it was, that offered the instant escape. Though his bow took +in Echo, he did not look at her, as turning, he followed Brent quickly +from the box. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap40"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XL +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +GENTLEMEN ALL +</H4> + +<P> +Chisholm Allen had come to the end of a long tether. He was drunk. +Not with the amiable jollity of the youthful tippler, nor with the +heavy, fatuous oblivion of the sot, but with the drunkenness that marks +the vicious rebellion of the nerve-cell against the prolonged +excitation of an intoxicant—the dreadful revenge wherein the outraged +brain summons the distorted imagination to fill the victim's landscape +with uncouth and demoniacal visitants. +</P> + +<P> +For a long fortnight, at the Springs, with a couple of cronies, he had +defied convention and strained the tolerance, which had countenanced +past escapades because he was an Allen, to the breaking-point. Only +when revelry had sunken to deep debauch had friends been able to bring +him to the city, where he had been bestowed in a room at the club to +await returning soberness. That night, however, when the friendly +guard had relaxed, Chilly had awakened to horrid visions. At first he +had known them for creations of his drunken fantasy, but they had +multiplied in numbers and horror till they had broken down the frail +bulwark of remaining reason and obsessed him with the sense of +reality—uncanny nightmares from some formless abysm, shuddering +mistakes of nature, mingling in a monstrous extravaganza that crowded +about to menace him. +</P> + +<P> +With a scream Chilly burst from the room and ran along an upper +corridor to the brightly-lighted reading-room. It was deserted at that +hour—but not for him, for the visitants from which he fled pursued him +there! They ringed him about, clutching at him. Livid and shaking, he +seized a heavy iron poker from the hearth and crouching in a corner, +beat off the imaginary assailants. +</P> + +<P> +It was upon this spectacle that the agitated steward had come, called +by a frightened bell-boy, and as the theatre stood opposite, he had +hastily sent thither, as the likeliest spot in which to find some +<I>habitué</I> of the Club who might assume charge of the situation. +</P> + +<P> +Two other club-members stood nonplussed and disconcerted on the +threshold of the room when Harry Sevier and Brent entered, with the +steward behind them. In the livid face of the boy at bay, the staring +distempered eyes, the gripped, impromptu weapon, Harry read the fact. +He spoke to him soothingly, but the frenzied brain did not recognise +him. To Chilly's imagination the friendly, familiar faces took on the +baleful character of the gibbering things by which he was beset. He +sprang up, slashing frantically with the iron, panting +indistinguishable words. Thus for a moment the writhing images fell +back—only one of the iron lizards that formed the andirons suddenly +came to life and on bat's-wings soared to a great marble bust that sat +on a shelf above the fireplace, where it perched and spat down at him. +</P> + +<P> +Chilly leaped up at it, dealing it blow after blow with the poker—then +laughed wildly to see it suddenly waver and topple forward. So it +seemed to him, but an exclamation of dismayed warning broke from +Harry's lips; it was the heavy marble itself, its too frail support +shattered by the attack, which was falling. He sprang forward. +</P> + +<P> +But he reached the spot too late. The great bust came crashing from +its height full upon Chilly's breast, and with a choked cry he went +down beneath it. +</P> + +<P> +The others rushed to him and between them the massive stone was lifted +from the broken body. "Call up a doctor," Harry ordered the steward. +"Get the nearest—tell him to hurry; Mr. Allen is badly hurt." To the +rest he said, "Nothing must be known, as to how this happened, outside +this room. It was an accident, remember, nothing more. The shelf was +weak and the bust fell." +</P> + +<P> +When the doctor came in, the crushed form lay upon a couch hastily +improvised from chair-cushions. Blood was welling from the pale lips. +He made a hasty examination, then looked up and shook his head. +</P> + +<P> +"Better fetch his father and mother," he said, "and as quickly as +possible." +</P> + +<P> +"I will go," volunteered Brent. "My car is at the theatre. I can do +it in twenty minutes." He went out quickly, while the man of medicine +opened his case and busied himself with restoratives. +</P> + +<P> +To Harry, who stood watching with the others, it seemed that these were +to be of no avail, but after a sensible interval Chilly opened his +eyes. He gazed at the professional face so near—at the other shocked +countenances grouped about. He saw the bust lying on its side. +</P> + +<P> +"I'm—sober now," he gasped. "I was—seeing things, eh? But I seem to +be—hurt. What's the matter?" +</P> + +<P> +"The marble fell and struck you," said Harry. +</P> + +<P> +A spasm of pain caught Chilly and he groaned. "I remember," he said, +and then, after a pause, "Am I—badly off?" +</P> + +<P> +"I'm afraid so," said the doctor. +</P> + +<P> +The pity in the tone conveyed its message. A tremor ran over Chilly's +face. There was a long moment's silence. +</P> + +<P> +"Have I—much time?" +</P> + +<P> +"Not very much," answered the other gently. +</P> + +<P> +Chilly caught a breath that was half a sob. "Poor little Nancy!" he +whispered. +</P> + +<P> +He looked up at the men who stood about him, "I would like—" he said, +hesitatingly but clearly, "I would be glad if some—explanation might +be made of this—occurrence—which would not involve unnecessary pain +to the Duchess. Perhaps that is—impossible. But I would—be +grateful—" +</P> + +<P> +One of the younger men leaned beside him. It was Lee Carter, his +closest friend, who had brought him that afternoon from the Springs. +"Dear old chap!" he said, brokenly. "I was standing just under it. +You saw it topple and jumped to save me! That is how it happened! +Every one of us saw it." +</P> + +<P> +A wan smile touched the whitening lips, "Gentlemen all!" said Chilly, +and closed his eyes. +</P> + +<P> +He lay silent then—he was breathing with increasing difficulty. At +length there was the sound of a motor halting outside, and Harry and +the rest went out. +</P> + +<P> +In the quiet of the room the door opened upon Judge and Mrs. Allen. +She was deadly pale, her face frozen with anguish. She knelt beside +the prostrate figure and took the cold hand of her son in hers. +</P> + +<P> +"Chilly!" she cried. "My poor, poor boy!" +</P> + +<P> +His eyes opened. He seemed, in that last fading instant, to see only +her. "Duchess!" he whispered, and with the word the light died in his +face. "Duchess!" +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Mrs. Allen looked at the Judge's quivering countenance with dull blank +eyes, that saw two great tears suddenly detach themselves and roll down +his pale cheeks. He took a step toward her. +</P> + +<P> +"Charlotte—" he stammered. "Charlotte!" +</P> + +<P> +There was in the shaking voice something that pierced her agony, a tone +that she had not heard on his lips for many, many long years—an echo +of accents that she had known when she was a bride. She gazed at him +an instant voicelessly. +</P> + +<P> +Then all at once her face broke up and a wild cry tore itself upward +from her heart. It was not the voice now of cold and placid scorn, but +that of the real woman—the eternal voice of Rachel weeping for her +children. The sword of overwhelming tragedy had stripped off the +protecting cicatrice of pride and arrogant resentment and bared the +lonely soul beneath, that in this shuddering instant groped wildly for +human comfort. +</P> + +<P> +The Judge bent down and clasped her, and there, above the body of +Chilly, for the first time since the son who lay dead before them had +been born, she lay in her husband's arms, her face turned against his +breast. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap41"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XLI +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +DARK DAYS +</H4> + +<P> +"If I only knew!" That was Echo's mental cry in the long days that +followed Chilly's burial. "If I only knew whether Harry cared for me +any longer!" Sharp as was her grief for her brother, this pang was the +sharper, and it did not dull with time. +</P> + +<P> +After the meeting in the corridor of the Convention Hall, when the +barrier had risen, so icily cold, between them, she had been unable to +blame him. The very depth of his hurt and resentment only showed her +how much he had once cared, and she had longed fiercely for an +opportunity of speech with him, which, it seemed to her, must set all +right. This opportunity she had discerned in Brent's invitation to the +theatre, since he had let fall that he had asked Harry also. She had +known the character of the play to be presented and otherwise would +have shrunk from the painful memories it must evoke, even though her +personal dread had been exercised by the escape from prison of the +convict from whose plight had come her own pain of conscience. But the +possibility of Harry's presence had outweighed other considerations. +In that moment in the box, when his lips had spoken her name, when she +had felt his hand tremble against her arm, the ice had seemed about to +melt in understanding. For an instant her heart had leaped up with +glad certainty, only to drop to anguished slowness again at his sudden +stricken silence. +</P> + +<P> +"If I only knew!" Through the months of the early summer the question +sat incarnate by Echo's side. By night and by day it never left her. +She had no confidant, could have none. From this trouble her father +himself was barred. It was some relief that she had no longer to wear +a smiling motley, but could give her grief free rein, and there were +times when she wept till the very fount of her tears seemed to be +exhausted—when it seemed to her that all her life was darkened and her +love lay stark with its death-tapers licking the gloom. +</P> + +<P> +As time wore on, and her father threw himself again into the work of +the political campaign, she was mentally more alone than ever. There +were few of those old hours when she had been used to sit with him in +the dusky library; for this room had become, gradually, the habitual +meeting-place of the leaders, the clearing-house of county news, the +forum in which were discussed and decided the varying policies of the +struggle. Occasionally Harry took part in these gatherings—not often, +for he was now away during long periods, speaking in various parts of +the state. By the newspapers Echo followed his every step. He made no +speech that she did not read with eagerness and pride. She knew that +he was making a whirlwind campaign that had steadily increased in +vigour and effect as the day of election drew nearer, and that, however +the issues might fall, he was stamping his individuality deeply upon a +wide community. She thrilled with the thought of his success, and in +the unselfishness of her love, this was some recompense. +</P> + +<P> +She found a kind of comfort, too, in the realisation that the relations +of her father and mother had subtly altered. In her whole life she had +never witnessed the smallest discourtesy of word or deed between them, +yet there was now a positive element in their intercourse which she had +never distinguished. Often now they sat together as the Judge wrote or +scanned his reports, sometimes he discussed with his wife the phases of +the political situation and once—with what Echo realised afterward was +almost a guilty start—she had come upon them sitting in the lamplight +hand in hand. She had turned away to discover that her eyes had +unaccountably filled with tears. +</P> + +<P> +Most of all that sustained her spirits in this period were her talks +with Brent. Trained newspaperman and observer as he was, he had thrown +himself into the battle with all ardour. Day after day, in trenchant +editorials, he preached the Gospel of the new party, and many times he +swung his long legs down the Avenue for a cup of tea at Midfields. His +admiration for the fight Harry was making was immense and he found in +Echo a perfect listener, sympathetic and comprehending. +</P> + +<P> +And so the months passed till there remained but a fortnight before +election day, and so deeply had Echo's imagination entered into the +great issue, so intimately were all her thoughts engaged with Harry's +tangible success, that even the dread of Craig's recovery, even the +pain and puzzle of her heart, were thrust into the background. +</P> + +<P> +That evening she sat at the piano in the drawing-room, her fingers +wandering in long dreamy <I>arpeggios</I>, when her maid brought her a +letter. It was from Nancy Eveland. She opened and read it through, to +the postscript on the last page: +</P> + +<BR> + +<P CLASS="letter"> +"The evening papers have a telegram from Buda-Pesth about Mr. Craig. +He left the hospital there yesterday. The operation was completely +successful." +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +She sat for some minutes with the paper held tight in her hand, with a +weird feeling that it was a warning, and when she tried again to play +her fingers stumbled into discord. +</P> + +<P> +It was long before she slept that night, and then the fear swooped upon +her in her dreaming. She thought it was her wedding-day and that she +was pacing up a church aisle, over rose-leaves red as blood strewn with +seed-pearls that had been her tears. Turned toward her were the faces +of her father and mother, of Chilly and of a myriad friends, who filled +every pew. At the altar Harry was standing waiting for her. But every +countenance wore a look of astonishment and trepidation, and she knew +that it was because the gown she was wearing was not white but black, +and her bride's veil of black crêpe. This, however, had been necessary +because she had wished that Craig would die, and the wish had somehow +brought his death about. She thought she tried to explain this, in a +whisper, to Harry, but he shrank from her. She turned to the rector, +who had been ready, but as she looked at him, he took off his surplice +and dashed it on the floor, and she saw that he was really Craig +himself. Then the organ crashed and lights flared up about her and +Harry vanished and all that was left was Craig's face, sneering at her, +with a red blotch on his temple. +</P> + +<P> +She awoke in the darkness with a start, trembling in every limb—to +hear a lone hound howling from the stable. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap42"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XLII +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +THE MENDED ROAD +</H4> + +<P> +Dr. Ivany, the great Hungarian specialist, adept in the delicate +adventurings of brain surgery, ceased his examination and refastened +the light bandage upon his patient's head with a look of satisfaction. +</P> + +<P> +"But yes," he said, in his concise French, "it goes well. I release +you from my care, Monsieur. One thing, however, you must remember. No +excitation. No anger. No prolonged mental labour for some months to +come. Otherwise—the tiniest hemorrhage in the affected area—and all +my surgery could not undo the damage again." +</P> + +<P> +The spruce young secretary who stood at Craig's side translated. +</P> + +<P> +"All right," said Craig. "Tell him I'm much obliged." He shook hands +with the great man without emotion, and when the door had closed upon +the latter he got upon his feet. "Have you arranged the rooms at the +hotel?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, sir." +</P> + +<P> +"Then get me out of here. The sooner the better." +</P> + +<P> +A half hour later he was in a suite of the hotel. "Now bring me the +home papers," he commanded. +</P> + +<P> +"To-day, sir?" ventured the secretary. "Do you think you are strong +enough so soon—" +</P> + +<P> +"Do as I tell you," was the curt reply. "I was shot on the ninth of +May, last year. I want to begin with the tenth, and I want all of +them!" +</P> + +<P> +The secretary went into the adjoining room, to return presently with a +file of newspapers, stitched neatly together, their columns marked here +and there in blue-pencil. He laid the great tome down on the table. +</P> + +<P> +"That's all now," said Craig. "I'll call when I want you again. I'll +dine here." +</P> + +<P> +Alone, he drew a long breath. Then he set his teeth and a peculiar +expression came to his face. A year, and more, had been snatched from +his life—this had been told him when it had been evident that the +operation had restored his faculties unimpaired, and as soon as he had +recovered sufficient strength. Beyond this, however, he had been told +nothing: on this score the surgical authority had been adamant. So, +for weeks, denied even the presence of his secretary, he had been +constrained, albeit impatiently, to subsist on the merest assurances +cabled him from day to day that the interests which had been in his +charge were adequately cared for, and to compel his stubborn resolution +to patience. Now the embargo had been lifted; he was once more his own +master. And before him, in black and white, lay the record of that +vanished time, which to him was but a meaningless void thronged with +vague and inchoate images, the story of the ignominy and downfall of +the man who had tricked him and robbed him of the woman he desired! +The blood rose in his temples. His lips drew up from his clenched +teeth and his fingers twitched as he reached for the newspapers. +</P> + +<P> +There it was, the episode that excluded all else from his thought, the +sensational headlines running half across the front page—the story, +pieced together by the assiduous reportorial pencil, of the burglars +and the shooting, the unknown feminine visitor who had disappeared in +the confusion leaving no clue behind her, the arrest of the single +desperado, closing with the latter's confrontation with Craig himself. +An exclamation of satisfaction fell from his lips. He had said to Echo +that there lived no man who could say that he had lied—a boast that +had had a shameful aftermath. Yet he felt now no shade of remorse for +the black perjury that had fastened the attempted murder upon Harry +Sevier. Rather he felt disappointed that consciousness had failed him +a moment too soon, so that his own lips had not placarded the other to +his face. That joy had been denied him. +</P> + +<P> +He turned the leaves, searching avidly for the headlines which should +have flung broadcast the startling identification. The events of the +great world, the larger happenings that had plunged two Balkan States +into war and overturned a British Ministry, the loss of a great ocean +liner—even a senatorial inquiry into the methods of the Distillery +Trust—held no interest for him at this moment. His brain had linked +onto the past where it had dropped it, and the empty gulf had laid no +cooling fingers on his burning craving for revenge. +</P> + +<P> +But the thing he sought was not there. "<I>Prisoner Refuses to Make Any +Statement</I>"—"<I>Criminal Unknown to Police</I>"—"<I>Sticks Stubbornly to +Policy of Silence</I>"—as he read, a dull flush overspread his face. +Fools! Was it possible that he—Harry Sevier—known to a thousand folk +of a city a couple of hundreds of miles away, could hoodwink the police +by the silly subterfuge of a newly-shaven chin? The papers shook in +his vengeful clutch as he turned and turned, conning the progress of +the trial. It ended with the conviction and the sentence; thereafter +the headlines told of things of fresher public interest. +</P> + +<P> +For a long time Craig sat perfectly still, staring into the grate whose +fire-light danced in yellow shadows on the wall, with the page open on +his knees. He had won the first trick, and Harry Sevier had played his +lone trump of silence. But what of that? He was a jail-bird, chained +to a cell for twenty years. His absence from home would long ago have +raised a question, which in the end must become insistent. He, Cameron +Craig, could answer that question! His lips curved in a cruel smile. +And Echo? She had profited by the situation—Harry had borne the brunt. +</P> + +<P> +Her lover! A sinistrous rage caught him as he repeated the word to +himself. No softer thought of her now lurked in the bitter chambers of +his mind. She had mocked and fooled him and he hated her with the +still, cold hatred which the strong and evil man feels for the weaker +thing that defies him. Yet so far as she was concerned he was +helpless. He could not deny his declaration that he had not known the +woman in the library. Life was long and he knew the penalty that in +the south awaited the man who wantonly attacked the character of a +woman. All facts aside, his sober judgment told him that the act would +bar against him every social door that now stood open. +</P> + +<P> +But Harry Sevier was another thing. Harry Sevier, thief and +house-breaker? Harry Sevier, a midnight assassin? Harry Sevier, the +nameless convict in the State's Penitentiary? What a story! Fate held +its compensations, after all. Now he would be able to figure, first +hand, in the sensation that he should send sweeping over the south like +a lurid flame! +</P> + +<P> +He rose and set the newspapers on the table, parting the leaves further +along, now that his main craving had been satisfied catching glimpses +of other things: movements in the business world, and the new political +alignment, the danger of which, to the interests with which he was +identified, he had long ago discerned. So the Civic Club following had +become a full-fledged party now—was reaching out toward a state-wide +organisation! +</P> + +<P> +Suddenly his gaze fixed itself and he bent over the page staring +unbelievingly. A hoarse ejaculation broke from him. What he saw was +the line, in inch-high letters— +</P> + +<P CLASS="t3"> +HENRY SEVIER FOR GOVERNOR!<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +He snatched up the file again and held it to the light. There was no +mistake! Three months ago, while he had lain inert in the hospital +above the river, the man he imagined the occupant of a prison-cell had +been nominated for the highest office in the Commonwealth, the +standard-bearer of the New Ideal! +</P> + +<P> +For an instant a keen trepidation darted through him. His hand went up +and touched the bandage. Could it be that he was—not himself? Was +what he had imagined only the figment of a brain astray? With a fierce +effort at self-control he sat down and beginning at the date at which +he had left off his reading, began to scan the columns carefully and +methodically, missing nothing. +</P> + +<P> +For two hours he did this, and at length he came upon a paragraph at +which his lowering face lightened with exultation. It chronicled in a +dozen words the escape from the Penitentiary of the convict who was +under imprisonment for the burglary of the Craig mansion and the +shooting of its owner. The circle of evidence closed up. He was +certain, now. +</P> + +<P> +Craig laughed out loud, a grating laugh of sardonic amusement. Again +the cards had fallen Harry Sevier's way. By some lucky chance he had +freed himself, and with the effrontery of supposed security had resumed +his old place and character, no one the wiser. Now he was actually +running for Governor! Well, the higher the pinnacle the more +spectacular the fall! The game was his, Craig's, for he held the +highest trump! +</P> + +<P> +He rang for his secretary. +</P> + +<P> +"Bring me the steamer-lists," he said, "and have the servants pack my +things. We are going to leave on the Nord-Express at midnight." +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap43"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XLIII +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +THE PITFALL +</H4> + +<P> +"So you think it incredible, then!" +</P> + +<P> +Lawrence Treadwell's glance at Craig was veiled as he replied, dryly: +</P> + +<P> +"I am considering the evidence as you present it, that's all. This, it +seems to me, is what it amounts to: Mr. Henry Sevier, a reputable +citizen and a well known resident of this place, a year ago leaves for +a vacation." +</P> + +<P> +"In disguise," interrupted Craig. +</P> + +<P> +Treadwell shook his head. "There is no evidence of that—it is mere +allegation. He was seen here late one afternoon, as usual. There +could be no mistake, for he's a characteristic enough individual. He +had arranged for the closing of his office, had told his clerk, in +fact, that he was going abroad. The same night, at midnight in your +own house—two hundred miles away and in another state—a man is +arrested, one of a gang of burglars. There were all the usual +earmarks—open safe, black mask, an attempt at escape, with the +shooting of yourself thrown in." +</P> + +<P> +"I identified him an hour later, as soon as I regained consciousness." +</P> + +<P> +"As the man who had shot you—yes. Your identification went no further +at that time. And since then you have been able to give no evidence." +</P> + +<P> +"Until now," said Craig grimly. +</P> + +<P> +"The burglar," pursued Treadwell, "is tried. He is unknown to the +local police. He refuses to tell his name. Naturally! He has served +time before and has no hankering for a life-sentence under the +'habitual-criminal' act. He is sentenced to twenty years. After a +period of incarceration, he escapes, as jail-birds will, and is not +apprehended. Some months afterward, Mr. Henry Sevier returns from his +vacation and resumes his popular career. He is just now in the public +eye—very much so, indeed. Do you seriously believe a claim that the +two men are identical will hold water?" +</P> + +<P> +Craig had been staring at him from under his shaggy brows. Anger was +seething in his brain at the suspicion he felt was lurking behind the +other's matter-of-fact logic. "Then you believe I am the victim of +hallucination?" he asked, with forced calmness. +</P> + +<P> +"Frankly," said Treadwell, "I think for you to allege such a thing +openly would, at the very least, make you seem ridiculous. Man, don't +you see? You've had a shock—a brain injury. You've been through a +long period of mental illness, culminating in a major operation! Don't +you realise—" +</P> + +<P> +Craig struck his fist upon the table and his teeth snapped together. +"Look here, Treadwell," he flamed, "I'm as sane as you are, and you +know it!" +</P> + +<P> +"Of course, of course," agreed the other, in a mollifying tone. "But +why not let the matter rest awhile? Go down for a month to Old Point +and build up—" +</P> + +<P> +Craig's face turned livid. He got up, and lifted one clenched fist in +the air. +</P> + +<P> +"Think what you like!" he said, venomously. "Do you suppose I care +what any one thinks? I'll show you whether I'm right or not!" His +voice rose. "I'll drag him in the mud! Every man and woman in these +two states—yes, and in a dozen more!—shall know him for a scoundrel +and a robber! He dares to run for Governor, does he? The drunken +<I>poseur</I>! The damned hypocrite! He shall be jail-bird again and once +for all, when I am through with him! He shall lie and rot with a chain +and ball on his leg! He—" +</P> + +<P> +He stopped. A needled stab of pain had darted, like a bee's sting, +through his brow, beneath the bandage, and there flashed to him +suddenly the warning of the surgeon, on the day he had left the +hospital in Buda-Pesth: "...the tiniest hemorrhage in the affected area +and all my surgery could not undo—" +</P> + +<P> +He stood still an instant, breathing heavily. Then he caught up his +hat and turned to the door. +</P> + +<P> +Treadwell was looking at him curiously. The outburst had tended to +reinforce the suspicion that had already come to him as to the other's +mental condition. "What do you intend to do?" he asked. +</P> + +<P> +"I am going to the Penitentiary, the physical record of the prisoner is +there. I shall have it when I come back. I presume you would call +that evidence?" +</P> + +<P> +"The best—if the measurements proved identical with Sevier's. I +daresay he would be willing to submit to the test," Treadwell added, +thoughtfully. "—And then?" +</P> + +<P> +"The election is day after to-morrow. I shall wait till the polls have +closed, naturally, before I show him up. A convict, or one who has +served a penal term, under the state constitution, can hold no office +of public trust. I am advised that the new ticket is likely to win. +The Trust's candidate will be next in the running, and with Sevier out, +must be declared elected. Where will Sevier receive the returns?" +</P> + +<P> +"At Midfields, I imagine," Treadwell replied. "It's the committee +headquarters. Governor Eveland of your State is to be a guest there, I +hear. He's very much interested in this campaign, being something of a +reformer himself." +</P> + +<P> +"So much the better! The Governor himself shall ask for the warrant +for Sevier's arrest. We will go there that evening." +</P> + +<P> +"We!" repeated Treadwell. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes. You will come with me—as my attorney." +</P> + +<P> +"But I don't approve the step!" protested the other. "I consider the +whole affair preposterous!" +</P> + +<P> +"I am under the impression," retorted Craig, darkly, "that you are +still under my retainer—not Sevier's." +</P> + +<P> +Treadwell flushed. "If you put it in that way," he said stiffly, "I +shall of course accompany you. But you have my legal opinion." +</P> + +<P> +Craig jerked the door open. +</P> + +<P> +"I'll meet you at Midfields at eight that evening," he said. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap44"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XLIV +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +THE LIGHTED FUSE +</H4> + +<P> +In the Warden's office at the Penitentiary next morning—the same room +Harry Sevier had entered when he had first stepped under the gloomy +prison archway—Craig stood staring out of the open window across the +yellow courtyard. The last move in the game was at hand—the game he +had made up his mind now to play out alone, to the last card. +</P> + +<P> +He had not taken the Warden into his confidence, though he had sat +talking with him for a half hour. From him he had heard the tale of +the escape of prisoner No. 239—a tender subject with the official, but +one in which his influential visitor had exhibited a particular +interest. To the Warden the latter's concern for a scoundrel who had +come within an ace of murdering him seemed natural enough. It would be +in keeping with Craig's determined and vindictive character to exhaust +every effort to apprehend the fugitive. To some intention of this sort +the Warden had laid his caller's further inquiries concerning the +pickpocket who had been the missing man's cell-mate. +</P> + +<P> +Craig, however, had had reason of another sort. It had chagrined him +to learn that with the prisoner had disappeared the record-card on +which he had counted as a piece of tangible evidence. But this was not +an essential, since, once denounced, Harry Sevier would be put upon the +defensive, and the one conclusive and natural defence—an alibi—he +could not furnish. In the meantime, however, the sensational +accusation should be supported, and what more to this purpose than the +convict who had shared No. 239's very cell? Promise of a pardon—he +could arrange that with the Board—would make the fellow tractable, and +he could take him with him on parole. +</P> + +<P> +The plan in his mind had leaped into action. He had expressed a wish +to talk with Paddy the Brick and the Warden had sent for him. Craig +was waiting the man's coming now, as he stood looking across the yard +toward the vast round dormitory that tossed back the rumble of the +toiling shops. There was an evil gloating in the fixed, speculative +eyes—in imagination Craig was seeing Harry Sevier once more a denizen +of that dismal place, a felon, and irrevocably shamed now in name and +fame. +</P> + +<P> +The door opened and a turnkey entered, a figure in striped clothes with +him. +</P> + +<P> +"Here's your man, Mr. Craig," said the Warden. +</P> + +<P> +Craig turned from the window and set his eyes on Paddy the Brick. He +gave a sudden start which the Warden, who had crossed to his desk and +was searching in its pigeon-holes, did not see. Paddy the Brick shrank +back, and a quick gleam of fear ran across his pallid features. For +each—the would-be murderer and the man he had shot—in the self-same +instant recognised the other. +</P> + +<P> +At the fierce anger that blazed in Craig's face Paddy the Brick drew +further back, his eyes darting from the man by the window to the Warden +and back again, and his hand went instinctively out to the table to +clutch a heavy, brass-edged ruler the only weapon at hand. It seemed +at the instant that the other was about to leap upon him, to kill him +with his working hands. But Craig recovered himself in time. He +looked at the Warden. +</P> + +<P> +"I should like to talk with him alone," he said, "if that is +permissible." +</P> + +<P> +"Certainly," the Warden answered. "As long as you like," and left the +room with the paper he had been looking for. +</P> + +<P> +As the door closed, Craig bent a long look upon the man who stood +there. "Don't be a fool," he said. "Put that thing down. I'm not +going to hurt you. I want to ask you some questions." +</P> + +<P> +Paddy the Brick laid the ruler down, but he kept the table between them. +</P> + +<P> +"Did you know who the man was who broke into my house with you—the one +who was caught?" +</P> + +<P> +The other looked at him cunningly. "The one you swore shot you?" +</P> + +<P> +Craig's fingers twitched. "Yes," he said, after a pause. +</P> + +<P> +"No. I never saw him before that night." +</P> + +<P> +"What did he pay you for that job?" +</P> + +<P> +Paddy the Brick stared. "Good Lord! <I>He</I> wasn't one of us. He just +happened in for a social call!" He leaned across the table. "Say," he +whispered, "what did you want to hang him for?" +</P> + +<P> +There was in the posture, the whisper, an inexpressible assumption of +identity of interest which stung and galled the man who faced him. The +blood welled into Craig's face, then very slowly ebbed. +</P> + +<P> +"Would you know him again, if he had changed his appearance? If, for +instance, he wore a beard?" +</P> + +<P> +"Know him!" Paddy the Brick jerked his thumb toward the window. "Why, +we was mates over there." +</P> + +<P> +Craig looked at him steadily for a moment without speaking. Then he +pointed to a chair. +</P> + +<P> +"Sit down," he said. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +At midnight that night the home city of Harry Sevier was ablaze with +lights and throbbing with the last feverish activity of a strenuous +campaign. The candidate of the new party had returned that afternoon +from a tour of the southern portion of the state, and plenteous +bunting, everywhere displayed, testified to an enthusiasm that, +carefully fostered by his lieutenants, had permeated every section and +class. That evening, to ring down the curtain with a brilliant +<I>finale</I>, a torchlight procession had been organised. Ten thousand +strong, the blazing flambeaux had marched and countermarched along the +city's main thoroughfares, and Harry had reviewed them from the balcony +of the hotel which was the party's <I>rendezvous</I>. +</P> + +<P> +He had flung himself into the fight with every ounce of his splendid +vitality which had been deepened and strengthened by the months of +mountain solitude. There was infinitely more at issue now than he had +dreamed when he canvassed chances at the bungalow. The cause of the +new party had then seemed inevitably a losing one. But during that +long campaign—particularly in the last few weeks—it had been borne in +upon him that the time had been ripe for the venture. Long arrogance +and effrontery had borne their legitimate fruit in a profound +resentment that had been fanned to vivid life by the quickening breath. +There had been an erasure of old lines, and at length the party in +power, aroused and desperate, had found itself fighting for its life. +There were no odds offered that day on its victory! Once committed, +however, there had been no turning back possible. Harry's bridges had +been burned behind him. He could only go forward, and, fighting on, he +had striven to thrust his problem, with its increasing implications, +into the background of his mind. And in spite of himself the zest of +victory had absorbed him. To-night's parade had been an inspiring +spectacle and it had called from him the last speech of the campaign. +</P> + +<P> +As he closed, amid the shouting and applause, a motor drew up at the +curb and stopped just before the hotel entrance. On its fear seat, +shielded from the gaze of the pavement by the leather hood, was Cameron +Craig, and beside the chauffeur sat Paddy the Brick. +</P> + +<P> +The crowds thinned, began to melt away; here and there the golden +square of a window went black on the quieting street. Still the car +made no move. At length a little knot of men issued from the hotel +lobby, pausing in the lighted doorway to say good night to one another. +Craig leaned forward. +</P> + +<P> +"The one in the centre," he said, in a low voice. "The one with the +beard." +</P> + +<P> +As he spoke, Harry Sevier's look crossed the pavement and met squarely +Craig's envenomed gaze. He saw the heavy head thrust forward from the +hood, with the white bandage across the temple and under it the +smouldering, implacable eyes. For a space that seemed interminable the +eyes held each other. A ghastly expression crossed his face. Very +slowly he turned and re-entered the lobby. +</P> + +<P> +Brent, who was the last to leave him, looked at him anxiously. +</P> + +<P> +"You're about all in," he said. "You look positively ill." +</P> + +<P> +Harry tried to smile. +</P> + +<P> +"It's nothing. I think I'll rest now." His voice had all at once lost +its <I>timbre</I>, had become flat and expressionless. All the electric +force, the fire and enthusiasm, had faded from it. +</P> + +<P> +Brent held out his hand. "Thank heaven it's over—all but the voting!" +he said fervently. "It's the reaction, I suppose." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," replied Harry, dully. "No doubt it's the reaction." +</P> + +<P> +He turned and went slowly to the elevator. +</P> + +<P> +In the automobile at the curb Craig touched Paddy the Brick on the +shoulder. "Well?" he asked. "Is he number 239?" +</P> + +<P> +Paddy the Brick looked at him with a white fury distorting his features. +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know whether he's 239 or not," he said, "but I'd swear to +anything that would 'fix' him! That's the lawyer that let them send me +up two years ago!" +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap45"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XLV +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +THE CHASM +</H4> + +<P> +The elevator deposited Harry at the third floor, where was the suite of +rooms that he had occupied while in town during the campaign, as being +more accessible than his own apartment. The outer chamber of the suite +was set with all the paraphernalia of a committee-room, with a huge +writing-table and several small desks holding telegraph instruments +installed to receive the returns. To-morrow would find it humming with +excitement, but it was deserted now. He had given Suzuki, his valet, +the evening off. +</P> + +<P> +He shut the door and stood a moment leaning against it. His eyes were +blank, his face set. He had not known of Cameron Craig's journey +abroad, nor in the rush of the campaign had he seen the newspaper +paragraph which told of the success of the operation in Buda-Pesth. +But in the single look across the pavement he had leaped to the truth. +Craig had recovered his faculties—there had been full knowledge and +vengeful purpose in the haggard eyes. What he had dreaded, the +possibility which he had of late locked in an inner chamber of his +mind, had come to pass. All was finished! The Sword of Damocles was +about to fall! +</P> + +<P> +What remained? To creep away, like a dastard, he, the leader in the +fight? To fly, like the discovered thief, as he had once thought of +doing? Even that was impossible now. He knew his enemy too well to +suppose that he would have left that way open! The other was but +playing with him, like a cat with a mouse, till the moment came to +publicly denounce him. For with a kind of prescience he guessed +Craig's real purpose, to seize the climactic moment and abstract from +his humiliation the last ounce of sensationalism. +</P> + +<P> +All night, in the silent, empty apartment, under the brilliant lights, +Harry strode up and down—up and down tirelessly, his face white, his +hands clenched, confronting the blank wall that reared before him. +Temptation, in its most insidious form, fell upon him. Why should he +not brazen it out? After all, the burden of proof was upon his +accuser. He had destroyed the record-card which had held his physical +measurements. Jubilee Jim could be depended upon to swear to his +presence at the bungalow through the winter: wild horses would drag no +other story from his faithful lips. Simple and God-fearing as the old +negro was, love for his master was one of the prime articles of his +emotional and uncomplex religion. For that love he would +unquestioningly risk even the fires of the material hell of which his +Bible told him! Such an alibi would hold. What other proof could +Craig bring forward, further than a fortuitous resemblance, materially +weakened now by hair and beard, to a one-time convict in a penitentiary +in another state? +</P> + +<P> +Was he not doubly justified in this deception? He was really innocent. +If he foreswore himself a thousand times, it would be in the way both +of justice and expediency. It would solve the problem. The new Cause +needed him. Had he any right to fling himself away, merely in the +interest of fictitious truth, on the mawkish principle of "Thou shalt +not do evil that good may come"? +</P> + +<P> +Yet, to perjure himself! To know himself liar and hypocrite, even in +the hour when he should kiss the holy volume in the vows of a high +office? He who even in that past that had been clouded by egoistic +eccentricity and marred by dissipation, had always counted an oath +sacred! To bind that faithful servant on the mountain to a black +perjury—which would shadow his imagination with the smoke of the +eternal burning! +</P> + +<P> +There came to him suddenly the memory of words that had woven with the +fevered imaginings of his illness on the mountain—words of Jubilee +Jim's prayer: +</P> + +<P> +"Dey tek yo' darlin' son ... en put er crown o' tho'ns on he beautiful +haid, en he ain' done nuthin' 'cep'n good. Ah don' keer what Marse +Harry have on; Ah reck'n when he come lak dis, yo' gwine he'p me he'p +him—kase dat what he done fo' me!" +</P> + +<P> +The stumbling, broken accents seemed to strike across the void. What +if, instead of the great machine of recompense that he had +distinguished in that prison experience, there were indeed a personal +God, as Jubilee Jim believed, throned in his vast white heaven of +glory—a God pitiful for the agony of his human creatures. Would he +look down now and hear his cry for help? Harry flung himself suddenly +on his knees, and leaned his forehead against the dark wainscoting. He +knew that he uttered no word, but all his being seemed to resolve +itself into an inarticulate cry for aidance. It was the first appeal +of his life to something outside of himself, the first cry of human +weakness, groping in its utter hopelessness for the Infinite. It was +the last step of the long way Harry had travelled—from self-abasement +to remorse and awakening conscience, through struggle with appetite to +victory over himself, self-abnegation, acquiescence in the great law of +retribution, and finally, in his despair, to prayer. +</P> + +<P> +And out of the deep to which he had called, calmness at length came to +him, and with it a clear and steady purpose. As dawn took down the red +draw-bars of the sky to let in the day, he threw open a shutter and +stood looking down with aching eyes upon the drowsily-waking street. +There should be no lying denial, no cowardly evasion—nothing less than +the naked truth. If fate, if God, demanded this last thing of him—if +only so could he balance the account—he would not repine. He had +fought the fight, and at the last, so far as he could, he would keep +the faith! +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Before the hotel had awakened, Harry was in his own apartment. He had +left a note for Brent, who was to be in charge at the hotel suite, +saying briefly that he should not appear that day, but would be with +the Committee at eight o'clock. He had sent the same message also to +Judge Allen. He told Suzuki to admit no one, disconnected his +telephone, and thereafter remained at his desk writing, a plate of +sandwiches at his elbow, bending himself to the final arrangement of +the details of his personal affairs, as he might have done, he thought +once, if by some clairvoyancy he foresaw that to-morrow he would die. +Death, indeed, would have been a welcome solution if by it he could +have bought extrication. Was he not going, living, to a worse death +than he should ever die? +</P> + +<P> +As the mantel-clock struck seven, he laid the last written paper in the +desk-drawer and rising, went into his dressing-room. He bathed and +dressed, the last time in his life, he told himself, that he should don +the evening habilaments of a gentleman—grave-clothes! For the blow +would not be delayed. To-morrow, no doubt, the state would ring with +his downfall. To-night—in the hour of his victory, if victory should +be his—he would write <I>finis</I> to the final chapter and surrender +himself to the law. +</P> + +<P> +It was just at the half-hour when Harry opened the outer door of his +apartment. But he did not pass through. Three men had been waiting +silently just across the threshold. One of them was Craig. They +entered without a word, Craig shut the door and one of the others took +his stand before it. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap46"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XLVI +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +CRAIG STRIKES +</H4> + +<P> +Sevier had stepped back as they entered. He had not been startled at +the ambush; he had gone past surprises. He was conscious only of a +cold preparedness and a kind of dull wonder as to the form of their +errand. The purpose in Craig's face left no cause for any speculation +as to their intent. He looked at the other's two companions, perfect +types of the "heeler," burly and with brutally-cunning features, that +wore now a gloze of satisfaction in the work that was forward. They +were not in uniform—it was not an arrest, then. What did Craig intend +to do? He turned, set his hat on the hall table and passed into the +sitting-room. Craig followed him. Harry now saw that he carried a +compact bundle under his arm. He snapped the cord and disclosed a +costume—jacket and trousers of black and yellow-grey stripes and a +flat, peaked cap of dingy canvas. Around one arm of the jacket was a +leathern band which bore a metal number—239! +</P> + +<P> +"Put them on," commanded Craig shortly. "Over what you are wearing. +They'll be large enough." +</P> + +<P> +A painful mist was before Harry's eyes. He understood. Craig meant to +give him up stamped with the old felon character, clothed in the +unmistakable livery of the convict! Well, if not to-night, to-morrow. +What did it matter? +</P> + +<P> +As he drew on the loathsome garments, buttoning the jacket close up to +his chin, their very touch seemed to cling insupportably to his flesh. +The smell of the coarse fulled cloth in his nostrils gave him a qualm +as of actual physical sickness, and the feel of the canvas cap across +his forehead burned it like a brand. +</P> + +<P> +Craig had taken from his pocket a black cloth mask. "Now this," he +said. "I believe you wore one in your last burglary," he added with +cold malevolence. "I am disposed to miss no realistic touch, believe +me." +</P> + +<P> +Harry put on the mask, whose lower hem fell below his beard. Through +its eye-holes he looked evenly at the sneering, implacable face +opposite. A peculiar apathy had come to him. The wide +humiliation—even the cheap and ghastly sensationalism of the mask did +not touch him. Like the hapless voyageur caught in the rapids above +the great falls, he was watching the nearing brink with a kind of +fascination and with the roar of the cataract in his ears. +</P> + +<P> +One of the men had opened a window to peer down into the street. "All +clear," he announced briefly, and Craig went to the hall and opened the +door. +</P> + +<P> +A monster limousine with curtains drawn waited at the curb, and on the +front seat sat a figure at whose pallid face and red-rimmed eyes Harry +gazed without a start but with a strange sensation of fitness. Here +indeed was the real thief who had shot Craig, but leagued now with his +enemy to his undoing! +</P> + +<P> +Sitting in the dark interior, as the car sped along with its silent +company, Harry remembered another ride of two years before, when he had +flung through the night flying from his own conscience, incarnate in +the figure that now rode beside the chauffeur. Was he never to lay +that old ghost? He noted dully that the streets were jostling with +eager throngs which made compact eddies here and there before some +newspaper bulletin-board or flaring club-window which displayed the +reports of the voting, as, township by township, county by county, the +tally came in. On one the legend was being posted, "<I>Sevier Leads</I>," +and a muffled cheer was wafted after. He shut his eyes. Almost he +could have thought himself in the grip of some <I>outré</I>, high-coloured +dream—but he knew that it was no dream. +</P> + +<P> +The limousine slowed and stopped. Harry turned his head as the door +opened; they were at the gate of Midfields. +</P> + +<P> +As they neared the upper end of the drive, a man rose from the steps +and came toward them. It was Lawrence Treadwell. He started as if he +had been stung at sight of the masked and striped figure between its +stolid escort. He turned on Craig, his eyes blazing with amazement and +anger. +</P> + +<P> +"My God!" he cried. "You haven't dared—but this is infamous. It's an +outrage! You—" +</P> + +<P> +"Keep your place!" ground Craig. "I tell you I know what I'm doing!" +</P> + +<P> +"It's my private opinion you're as crazy as a March hare," retorted the +other, "but if you <I>are</I> right, I'll have nothing to do with it, do you +understand? Nothing! I don't care <I>what</I> your damned evidence is!" +</P> + +<P> +Craig turned his back on him and led the way up the steps, and after an +instant's hesitation Treadwell followed. Through an open window Harry +glimpsed the interior of the east room, dismantled now for the +evening's strenuous occupation, where several masculine figures were +grouped about a table, excitedly working over charts, and he could hear +the irritant buzz of the telephone as it signalled the bulletins that +were beginning now to pour into the busy hotel suite at the other end +of the wire. Craig did not ring at the big door but led the way along +the porch to a French-window, of the library, which stood ajar. He +peered into it, then with an exclamation of satisfaction motioned the +two attendants back, said a low word to Paddy the Brick at his heels, +and flung the window open. +</P> + +<P> +Sevier entered, Craig and his stool-pigeon next. Treadwell followed +and drew the window to behind him. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap47"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XLVII +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +WITH HIS BACK TO THE WALL +</H4> + +<P> +In the wide, lamp-lighted room into which this weird quartette had so +startlingly entered, before the capacious fireplace two men had been +sitting smoking—Judge Allen and his friend Governor Eveland. At the +sudden apparition both had turned sharply toward the window—two +strangely dissimilar figures: the Judge slight and spare and scholarly, +his pale, finely-chiselled features tinged in the glow; the other +deep-chested and powerful, of herculean mould, with a rugged face made +almost patriarchal by the long grey beard which swept his chest: both +countenances for the instant curiously alike in their expression of +shocked surprise. +</P> + +<P> +The Judge arose abruptly from his chair, his gaze shifting from the +masked figure in striped clothes to Craig's face, eagerly alight and +triumphant. He had no welcome for this summary entrance. +</P> + +<P> +"Who is responsible for this intrusion?" he asked coldly. +</P> + +<P> +Craig laughed. "I am responsible," he said. "I have business with you +both. For some time, as you are aware, I have been debarred from such +pursuits. However, I am now myself again, and free to pick up lost +threads. Hence my call to-night." +</P> + +<P> +"It can wait a more opportune time." The Judge spoke with asperity. +"Moreover, I must ask you to remember that I have servants to announce +my guests." +</P> + +<P> +"Apologies may be in order later," Craig returned, "if my errand does +not justify itself. My business with you is to inform you that you and +your friends have been giving countenance to a man whom the law is +tracking down—a convict who escaped from prison in the next state some +months ago. You see him before you." He looked at the Governor, who +had neither moved nor spoken—he had small liking for Cameron Craig. +"My business with you, Governor Eveland, is to demand that you call +upon the local authorities to arrest this jailbird, pending his +extradition to your own jurisdiction. I have brought with me, under my +personal surety, an inmate of the penitentiary"—he pointed to Paddy +the Brick—"who was this criminal's cellmate and who has identified +him." +</P> + +<P> +There was a slight pause before the Governor replied. He had shared +his host's irritation at the unceremonious entrance and this was +allayed by no regard for Craig, whom he had always reckoned an evil +influence in the activities of the state of which he himself was Chief +Executive. Now the pallid face with its bandage across one temple, the +distempered eyes and strange excitement, smote him with distaste. +</P> + +<P> +"I like neither your method nor your manner, Mr. Craig. This would +seem to be a matter for the police, not for me, nor, I take it, for +Judge Allen. Why you choose to drag this man here, at such a moment, +with this skulduddery of mask and stripes, I cannot imagine." +</P> + +<P> +Craig laughed again, sneeringly. "A little fancy of my own, and regard +for the dramatic proprieties..." +</P> + +<P> +Treadwell strode forward with an exclamation. +</P> + +<P> +"Judge—Governor Eveland!" he said explosively. "Let me say something. +I came here to-night purely in my capacity of Cameron Craig's attorney, +intent only on saving him from what seemed to me a piece of brazen +lunacy. But I begin to see that there is something behind this, and if +it isn't lunacy it is something I like still less. I withdraw here and +now from any connection with him or this action—" +</P> + +<P> +"Withdraw and be damned!" Craig flung him, savagely. "I know what I am +about!" His voice rose. "That man, Governor Eveland, is an escaped +prisoner from the penitentiary of your state! Tear off his mask and +see for yourselves who our 'John Doe' really is—this fine thief and +would-be murderer—the man who shot me down a year ago!" +</P> + +<P> +"Stop!" The Governor's voice rang through the room. He was on his +feet now, stern authority in every line of his posture. "Mr. Craig, +listen to me! You have thrust yourself here without warrant of right +or of invitation, in a matter which you—not I—have elected to make my +business. Very well: I take the affair and this prisoner into my own +hands. Do you understand?" +</P> + +<P> +He paused, his lips clipped to like shears. Craig's outburst, vicious +with suppressed fury, had given him a lightning-like glimpse into +something unguessed in the situation. The man before him, then, in +this convict dress, was the burglar convicted of that old shooting—the +prisoner whom he had seen at the court-house, and whose personality had +so attracted and puzzled him. Yet there was more beneath Craig's +attitude than an understandable desire to punish the man who had shot +him: more than that in those infuriate eyes, shaking hands and +malicious triumph. The Governor had a hatred of persecution. His mind +worked according to a law of stern and inflexible justice, yet to him +justice opened itself to no assault of man's passions. +</P> + +<P> +Under that holding look Craig sat down heavily, angry arrogance in his +face. Treadwell took a chair near him, and Paddy the Brick remained +standing in the background, his small eyes glancing furtively from one +to the other. +</P> + +<P> +The Governor resumed his seat and bent his deliberate gaze on the +figure that had been standing movelessly before him. A quick memory +had come to him of the other's face, now hidden, as he remembered to +have once seen it—clear-eyed, vivid and forceful, strangely lacking in +the ear-marks of the criminal, a face that had often recalled itself to +his mind since that day. He had no vulgar curiosity, but the patent +mystery in the background called to him strangely. +</P> + +<P> +"Are you, as this man alleges, a prisoner who some months ago broke +jail in the adjoining state?" +</P> + +<P> +"I am." The voice, muffled by the mask, was low but distinct. +</P> + +<P> +"The man who shot him in his library?" +</P> + +<P> +"No." +</P> + +<P> +The questioning, deep grey eyes looked steadily at the mask—it seemed +as if the gaze would bore through the cloth. "But you were found +guilty of that offence!" +</P> + +<P> +"I was convicted, yes." +</P> + +<P> +The Governor was silent a moment; then his hand reached for the pen on +the table. "On the admission, then," he said slowly, "it is my duty to +request the authorities to take you into custody. You are aware of +your rights under the law?" +</P> + +<P> +The striped figure bowed. "I am. I shall waive extradition. With +your permission, however, I should like to make a statement." +</P> + +<P> +"He can make that in the jail," interposed Craig contemptuously. "Take +off his mask and send for the police." +</P> + +<P> +The Governor frowned. "He can make it here and now, if he so chooses. +This is not your house, Mr. Craig. If you do not care to listen, there +will be no objection to your withdrawal—with your witness." +</P> + +<P> +There was a fleeting pause, in which a livid red mounted to Craig's +brow, dark against the bandage. Then the Governor turned. +</P> + +<P> +"Do you take your solemn oath that what you are about to say is the +truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?" +</P> + +<P> +"I do." +</P> + +<P> +The Governor leaned back in his chair. "You may make your statement," +he said quietly. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Harry bowed. He was feeling a chill sense of estrangement, as though +the bars that were so soon to shut him from the life of which he had +been a part had already fallen between him and his friends. But he was +oddly self-controlled. In the few moments he had been thinking +swiftly—not of himself, but of the cause he represented, the men who +had pinned their faith upon him and whom he had betrayed, whose leader, +Judge Allen, sat there now ignorant of the ruin that overwhelmed them. +To say to him, "I, Harry Sevier, whom you honoured, whom you made the +bearer of your party banner, reached forth for this trust knowing +myself a hunted man, outlawed of honest folk!" They were his friends, +his loyal comrades in the fight, men whose friendship had been tried +out by long years! In this last hour he shrank from a judgment biased +with sympathy, and a fierce craving was rising in him for a +justification based on no personal appeal. +</P> + +<P> +He took a step backward to the mantel and stood thus, a little removed +from them, looking from one to the other. He spoke in a low voice—not +the alert, vibrant voice of the old Harry Sevier, but one alien, +metallic, and strangely devoid of feeling. +</P> + +<P> +"What I have to say may soon be said. It was not of my own will that I +came here with covered face, and since this masquerade is not of my +choosing, it may serve its purpose a moment longer. You, Judge Allen, +know me well. Governor Eveland, you also are not unacquainted with me. +With every one in this room I have come in contact—not as a convict, +but as a citizen and an honest man. My association with you, Judge +Allen, has involved certain responsibilities, and these I have accepted +while I have lain under the law. For this I owe you a greater +reparation than I can ever make. I know that justification in the eyes +of the world is impossible, but in your own mind—in the minds of +others who stand with you—it perhaps may be given me. But a +justification is empty to me that springs from personal sympathy. I +want it as man to man. For this reason I keep on the mask a little +longer." +</P> + +<P> +He paused. The Governor had not spoken; he had settled back in his +great chair, one hand in his beard. The Judge was leaning intently +forward, his hands clasped; he had never taken his eyes from the +speaker, save once to glance at Craig, who sat with narrowed eyes and +heavy lips curved in a malicious sneer. Treadwell's elbow was on his +knee, his chin in his palm, his brows drawn into a frown that told +nothing, and behind all stood Paddy the Brick, furtively watching. +</P> + +<P> +When the striped figure spoke again, it was in a voice which held a +first thin thrill of feeling: +</P> + +<P> +"I have said that I lay under the law, but it was through that law's +error. I was unjustly accused and wrongfully convicted. I was +innocent." +</P> + +<P> +The Governor spoke, coldly and deliberately. "You were taken at +midnight in the Craig house." +</P> + +<P> +"I had entered it for no dishonest purpose. I broke no bolt nor +bar—that had been done before my arrival." +</P> + +<P> +"You allege, then, that you were not in company with the robbers?" +</P> + +<P> +"I was not. They were there when I entered." +</P> + +<P> +"Why did you not give the alarm?" +</P> + +<P> +"They made me their prisoner. A pistol was at my head." +</P> + +<P> +"You did not so testify at your trial." +</P> + +<P> +"I declined to testify at all." +</P> + +<P> +The Governor nodded. "That is true," he said. "I remember." +</P> + +<P> +There was a moment's pause, then the voice continued: +</P> + +<P> +"It is sometimes inevitable that the law, whose purpose it is to be +just, is terribly unjust. Sometimes the sole clue to a situation which +seems to spell inevitable guilt lies in a fact, small in itself, whose +significance is such that it cannot be brought forward. This was my +case. The fact which would have cleared me could not be told. I +became a convict. For six months I was an inmate of the Penitentiary. +Then—the way opened to freedom, and I took it. What man would not +have done so? I acknowledged no right of the law over my body. I went +back to my former life, and took up my old profession here in this +city." +</P> + +<P> +"Here!" The Judge muttered, under his breath. +</P> + +<P> +"And in that life I found opening responsibilities. New work called to +me. My help was needed. I could not shirk it. I knew the risk +always, but I counted it small. And the need was great! With such a +work waiting my hand, a labour that no one else, it seemed, could +do—one upon which much depended—was I to stand aside, to withhold my +effort on the slender chance that discovery might sometime overtake me?" +</P> + +<P> +The speaker seemed to have forgotten the Governor, to have swept all +else to one side and to be addressing now only the Judge, in an appeal +that touched the older man profoundly. It was, he thought, as though +the man's whole soul was crying out in some sense for forgiveness and +absolution for an injury unwittingly inflicted. +</P> + +<P> +"The one thing has happened now which must lay the past bare. I must +meet this—the scandal, the shame. My life, all that makes life worth +living, ends to-night, and I stand before you with the bare soul of a +truthful man. You have known me and trusted me. You—and others—have +put faith in me...." The voice, for the first time, faltered and fell. +</P> + +<P> +The Judge's head had been bowed, but he lifted it now. +</P> + +<P> +"God alone knows the secrets of our hearts," he said, heavily. "If you +were innocent—but of that how can I say? My view of your actions +since your escape—those which may affect me—must necessarily hang +upon that point. I could believe that you are not a burglar. It may +be that knowledge of your true identity will presently convince me of +this. And I might be persuaded that your presence in the Craig house +that night was no more than an unfortunate coincidence. But the +evidence of the shooting appeared at the time irrefutable. I cannot +conceive that the mere knowledge of what you are would be likely to +affect my belief in that respect. Your statement as to that is not +only wholly unsupported, but was—and is—bluntly contradicted by the +man who was shot." +</P> + +<P> +He ceased speaking. No word came from the striped figure, only a +slight movement of one hand, expressing at once resignation and +futility. Then the hand lifted to the mask. +</P> + +<P> +The Governor, however, stayed the action of revealment with a sudden +gesture. +</P> + +<P> +"One moment," he said quickly. "We have gone so far, I should like to +go a step further—and still forensically, if you please. The question +of identity may wait. Do I understand that you deny that you fired +that shot?" +</P> + +<P> +"I do." +</P> + +<P> +Craig lurched forward in his chair. "This is no trial court!" he +exclaimed savagely. "He has had his hearing once." +</P> + +<P> +"Be silent!" commanded the Governor. "This man is in my hands, not in +yours!" The warning was heavy and vengeful, and it held now all the +electric energy of the man that had made him famous through a long +career of criminal practice before his Governorship days, and that now, +unleashed, dominated the room. Before it Craig whitened with a surge +of anger that sent a keen probe of pain through his temple. He sat +back, breathing hard, his great fingers working on the arms of his +chair. +</P> + +<P> +The Governor was leaning forward now, his hand on the table. +</P> + +<P> +"If I recollect—and I think I do, as certain aspects of the case +interested me at the time—there was a witness to the shooting beside +the men who were assumed to be your comrades. There was a woman there." +</P> + +<P> +"She did not see my face." +</P> + +<P> +"But she might have seen the face of the shooter. Why did she not see +yours?" +</P> + +<P> +"I wore a mask." +</P> + +<P> +"Is not a mask, in itself, a badge of criminal intent?" +</P> + +<P> +"It was not mine. One of the men dropped it when they ran." +</P> + +<P> +"If, being innocent," the Governor went on, "you put on the mask, the +only presumption is that you did not wish the woman to recognise you. +Therefore, she knew. Did you speak to her?" +</P> + +<P> +There was no reply. +</P> + +<P> +"If you spoke to her, it was when the man who had fired the shot was in +flight. Your words to her, verified by herself—if she were +reputable—would be evidence that you did not do the shooting. Why +then, did you not call her as a witness?" +</P> + +<P> +The long French-window had swung again ajar and the cooling evening +breeze rustled the paper that lay upon the table. From the far road +there came a muffled, long-drawn cheer, that trailed across the tense +silence of the room. +</P> + +<P> +"If the significant fact which could be brought forward at your trial +was the identity of this missing witness; if her testimony would show +that the law had erred—if it might operate to establish your +innocence—would not she herself justify you in revealing it?" +</P> + +<P> +The silence, a longer one this time, remained unbroken. +</P> + +<P> +"Do you still refuse to tell the name of the woman?" +</P> + +<P> +"I do." +</P> + +<P> +The Governor leaned to the table and picked up the pen. But in the +instant there was a quick step behind them. +</P> + +<P> +All turned. Echo stood framed in the window—a figure in filmy white, +against which a single rose glowed like a hot ruby. +</P> + +<P> +"I was that woman, Governor Eveland," she said clearly. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap48"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XLVIII +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +THE HEART OF A WOMAN +</H4> + +<P> +For an instant there was a blank silence. The Judge sat as if stunned, +one hand across his lips, the other clenched on his knee. Harry's +breath had caught in his throat; he stood taken aback and confounded, +his thought shocked apart and dispersed as a street explosion +dissipates a crowd of pedestrians. He forgot all else, was conscious +only of the deep fire of her eyes and the white surge of her breast, +only that he loved her and that she stood on the brink of ruin—she +whose name was unspotted from the world! An irrepressible exclamation +burst from his lips. +</P> + +<P> +The Governor put up his hand. "We will have the truth!" he said +sternly. +</P> + +<P> +He sat erect in his chair, his bushy brows drawn together, his +compelling eyes holding Echo's. Slowly he turned his grey head toward +Craig. +</P> + +<P> +"It was Miss Allen," said Craig. His smouldering gaze had fastened on +her with a savage joy. The drama was rushing now to its inevitable +<I>dénouement</I>. +</P> + +<P> +The crisis had come to Echo with fateful suddenness. From the +porch—whither she had stolen, full of excitement, to listen to the +bulletins from the east room that spelled victory for the cause of +Harry Sevier—she had glimpsed through the French window that gathering +in the library—the striped masked figure standing as before his +judges, Craig with his bandaged temple, the silent listeners. The mask +and the convict garb recalled that terrible midnight at Craig's house +and the later episode at the jail, blent in a shuddering composite, +even as the significance of the scene came home to her with a sudden +horrifying clarity. It was true then; Craig had returned recovered! +The escaped convict had been retaken, and he had come forward to repeat +his mistaken testimony! In her confusion of mind she did not reason: +it did not occur to her that here was no tribunal of justice. The +suggestion was overpowering: she only knew that within that room men +sat again in judgment upon him with whose fate her own peace of mind +was so entangled. And she knew the truth! In the swift surprise the +shame and horror of the publicity which had wrestled with her pain of +conscience during the weeks succeeding her visit to the jail and the +baleful certitude it had brought, rolled over her anew with the +anguished dread of Harry Sevier's contempt. But there was no wavering: +the fight had been fought out once for all, and she had waited for +Craig's revelation with outer calmness, though with her blood stilling +to an icy current in her veins. Two things had come to her at the same +instant: Craig did not intend to involve her, and the convict knew who +she was. As she leaned against the sill listening, the meaning of that +obstinate refusal to answer had thrilled her. He, like Craig, had +known her, then, all along. Yet he had not betrayed her, nor would he +betray her even now! The thought had spurred her resolve and sent her +forward into the room with that confession on her lips. +</P> + +<P> +She came forward slowly, with what seemed a pathetic weariness. Her +face was without colour and there were bruised shadows beneath her +eyes, but above them her amber hair was like sunbeams in a mesh of gold. +</P> + +<P> +"Governor Eveland," she said, "you have known me all my life. I do not +think you have ever had cause to doubt my word." +</P> + +<P> +"There is no need to remind me of that, my child," he answered, +gravely. "Neither I nor any one who knows you, would believe you spoke +anything but the truth." +</P> + +<P> +A wan smile, in which was yet a glint of pride, crossed her face. +"Then," she said, "I have faith that you will believe me now. I went +to that house to gain a thing dearer than my own happiness. No one at +home knew it. I did so secretly—my parents believed that I had gone +to visit my aunt." +</P> + +<P> +She paused an instant, and turned upon Craig a look of mingled scorn +and aversion. "This man had once done me the honour to ask me to marry +him, and I had done myself the honour to refuse. He had in his +hands—how it had come to him I have never known—a letter which he +threatened to publish. It was a personal letter that had no bearing on +the present—one written before I was born—but it had the power to +bring pain and humiliation upon some one I loved." +</P> + +<P> +The Judge lifted his head; his eyes were moist and shining. "That is +true," he said, in a smothered voice. "I knew of the letter, and—of +the threat." +</P> + +<P> +She did not proceed at once; her gaze was still upon Craig, and she +waited. +</P> + +<P> +"It is true enough," he said, and burst into jarring laughter. "Yes, +gentlemen. It is the fact. I had that letter and I would have made my +price on it!" He looked from one to the other challengingly, the +arrogance and unscrupulousness of the man leaping in his eyes. But no +one spoke. Only Treadwell, his eyes averted, moved his chair a little +further from him. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," she repeated, deliberately. "You made your price. I went there +that night, to your house, to beg you for that letter. I waited for +you till you came, and when you would not give it to me otherwise, I +agreed to marry you." +</P> + +<P> +She faced the Governor again. "I was to marry him within the hour. +Then—then came the shot from the alcove. I was mad with fright and +with fear. There had been three men behind the curtains. Two ran—the +man who had done the shooting and another. The third—" +</P> + +<P> +She broke off and turned to the motionless figure in the striped +clothes. "I know now that you were the third!" she said. "I thank +you—with all my heart I thank you, for what you did!" +</P> + +<P> +There was no answer from behind the mask, and she again addressed the +Governor: +</P> + +<P> +"This man must have heard my pleading and pitied me. He thought of me +before he thought of his own escape. He took the letter I had come for +from the safe and gave it to me, then dragged me to the door and told +me to run. So I—I got away." +</P> + +<P> +The room was so still that one heard now, through the closed doors, the +muffled click of the telegraph keys in the east-room, and the voices of +the clerks calling the tally of figures. Wistfulness and pain had +crept into her voice now. +</P> + +<P> +"Next day the newspapers said that the man who had fired the shot had +been arrested. I believed this to be true, for though I went one day +to the trial, I was in the court-room only a few moments and I could +not see the face of the man who was being tried." +</P> + +<P> +The striped figure made a sudden involuntary movement. She had not +seen him, then? Could it be that he had been mistaken, that she had +not known? Harry's heart began to beat violently. +</P> + +<P> +"I believed it till months afterward, when I came back from Europe. +Then I saw a ring which this man had given to his lawyer. It was like +the one the man who had given me the letters had worn that night, and +this made me afraid that a mistake had been made. I visited the +Penitentiary to find out. It was the day of the attack on the +warden—when this man was stabbed in his defence." +</P> + +<P> +Again she paused and her eyes shifted to the masked figure. "You must +have known me," she said gently. "You must have known my name. Yet +you never told. Do you think, whatever it might mean to me—after what +you did—that I could keep silent, if the truth may help you now?" +</P> + +<P> +Sevier had no answer. Through and through the maze of his conflicting +feeling was stabbing an assurance sharpened with unbelievable joy. He +had been thinking her cowardly and calloused with worldly selfishness; +here she was risking all—and not for him, Harry Sevier, whom she +loved, but for an unknown convict! +</P> + +<P> +The Governor was looking at her with intentness. "You mean that he is +<I>not</I> the one who did the shooting?" +</P> + +<P> +"He is not." +</P> + +<P> +Craig sneered. "She says what she has been told to say," he said with +dry lips. "You will understand why, presently." +</P> + +<P> +"Perhaps," returned the Governor, coldly, "I shall." Then, turning to +Echo— +</P> + +<P> +"How do you know this is not the man?" +</P> + +<P> +"This man is tall; the man who did the shooting was short." +</P> + +<P> +"But—his face. You saw it that night distinctly? Would you know it +if you saw it again?" +</P> + +<P> +"As well as I know yours." +</P> + +<P> +He said no more, and after an instant's pause, she went on: +</P> + +<P> +"Mr. Mason, his lawyer, had told me he believed that if the shooting +could have been disproved, his client might have been cleared, and +knowing what I did, it seemed to me that I must tell the whole. +It—was not easy, for while that night I had thought only of keeping +the secret of the letter, I came to see later what the world would say +of my presence there. And a woman's name is all she has. So ... I +made up my mind. But that same day I read that the man had escaped +from prison. There seemed no longer any need then of my telling. +There had been no need till now." +</P> + +<P> +She stopped, and stood looking steadily at the Governor, her hands +twisted together, her face white. She was far less vividly conscious +of him, however, and of all the others—Craig, her father, +Treadwell—than of one whom she thought far away, but who now, sometime +or other, must know! +</P> + +<P> +The Governor spoke, quietly and evenly: +</P> + +<P> +"Let us go back to a matter of detail. I should like to picture the +scene that night a little more distinctly. Where were you standing +when the shot was fired?" +</P> + +<P> +She changed her position slightly. "Here, nearly in the centre of the +room." +</P> + +<P> +"And the man who shot from the alcove?" +</P> + +<P> +"There." She pointed one side, to the bay-window, before which now +stood Paddy the Brick. +</P> + +<P> +The latter would have drawn away, but the Governor stayed him with a +gesture. "No, stand where you are, if you please," he said. And Paddy +the Brick stood still, shifting his feet and ill-at-ease, his narrow +eyes turning stealthily toward Craig. +</P> + +<P> +To Echo the illusion was considerable, for the room was not unlike that +other library in which had occurred the scene she was so painfully +redrawing. There was the same effect of rich bookcases, of desk and +picture-hung walls, and in lieu of the alcove was the big double window +with its heavy drawn curtains. The Governor stretched his hand and +tilted the shade of the lamp, so that its light fell full upon the +latter, lighting the cringing face of the stool-pigeon before it. +</P> + +<P> +"What was the man who shot like?" he asked. +</P> + +<P> +"He was middle-sized and thick-set, with light hair that sprang in a +cowlick from his forehead. He..." +</P> + +<P> +She had stopped abruptly. She was staring with wide, horrified eyes at +the man who stood blinking in the radiance—at the up-thrust, +sand-coloured hair, the rounded shoulders, the red-rimmed eyes, which +now held a trapped look of animal fear. +</P> + +<P> +She stiffened. She pointed at him. +</P> + +<P> +"<I>You!</I>" she cried. "<I>You are the man who fired that shot!</I>" +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap49"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XLIX +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +THE GOVERNOR TAKES A HAND +</H4> + +<P> +On the startled silence, already so tense with conflicting forces, the +accusation fell with the suddenness of an electric shock. +</P> + +<P> +Its effect on Paddy the Brick was instantaneous. He drew back, his +hand clutching at the curtains. He was looking not at Echo, but past +her, at the Governor, who had risen towering in his place, and if ever +guilt and the dread that is confession showed upon a face, it was +written upon his, in lines unmistakable that he who ran might read. +</P> + +<P> +Craig started from his seat. "You fool!" he snarled at him. +</P> + +<P> +But Paddy the Brick gave him no glance. The fear of the hunted was +upon him; he saw himself taken in a snare, the witnesses to his +unpunished act confronting him, and clutching at him the hand of the +Law. He turned, and with one desperate jerk, tore the hangings aside, +and with arms before his face, plunged bodily through the shattering +glass of the bay-window to the garden. +</P> + +<P> +So abrupt and fateful had been the crash of his headlong flight, that +for a breath it seemed as if all there had been turned to stone. Craig +first found voice. +</P> + +<P> +"Enough of this farce!" he cried. "Governor Eveland, this man is an +escaped convict, and I call upon you to do your duty!" +</P> + +<P> +The Governor turned swiftly on him, his cavernous eyes flashing fire. +His long forefinger shot out like a javelin. +</P> + +<P> +"You coward and blackmailer!" he blazed. "The man you brought here as +your witness was the one who shot you! His very flight is confession. +And I believe <I>you knew he was the guilty one</I>!" His deep voice rang +like a bell, quick with indignation and contempt. "You hate this man +before you, and when he came between you and your plan, you tried to +lie the noose about his neck!" +</P> + +<P> +Craig's face was convulsed, his hands moving in distorted gestures. A +writhing spot of pain was bubbling like a white-hot coal beneath the +bandage on his temple. He burst into a wild laugh. +</P> + +<P> +"Damn your beliefs!" he shouted. "You know who I am! The whole state +knows me! What I swore to I'll swear to again. You can't make black +into white by your opinions. This man is a convict—a <I>convict</I>! Do +you hear? He is under sentence..." +</P> + +<P> +The Governor had seated himself at the table and was writing swiftly. +He looked up now. +</P> + +<P> +"And I," he thundered, "am Governor. As such, I don't care who he is. +I don't want to know. It is enough that I am convinced of his +innocence, as I am of your perjury. Here is his pardon. From this +moment he is free!" +</P> + +<P> +He rose, and if honest indignation could have blasted, his look would +have blasted the man who stood livid and gasping before him: +</P> + +<P> +"Let me tell you one thing more, Cameron Craig! If you dare to drag +his name or that of this woman into publicity now, to satisfy your mean +revenge, I'll see that you are indicted, so help me God! We shall find +whose testimony will be believed!" +</P> + +<P> +Craig, swaying now on suddenly numb and uncertain feet, would have +shouted too, but his tongue seemed tied and a heavy torpor was +clutching all his limbs. He heard his own voice come forth ragged and +broken: +</P> + +<P> +"I—I dare! You—this—!" +</P> + +<P> +Tottering, he lurched to a chair and fell into it, even as the +Governor's look took on a glare of outraged astonishment—for Craig's +face now was drawn and contorted into a malignant grimace. But all at +once this faded out, the features became expressionless, the eyes dull, +and he slipped in a huddle from the chair to the floor. +</P> + +<P> +He lay there upon his face without a word or movement. He did not hear +the Governor's exclamation nor the voices about him, nor feel the touch +of inquiring hands at heart and wrist. His passion had undone him. +The dulling pulse beat on, but the brain had once more ceased its +functioning; nor would it ever again quicken that inert body, at the +behest of the great surgeon in Buda-Pesth or of any other. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Outside in the hall there were confusion and wondering voices, as the +Governor, bending his great frame to the burden, with the aid of the +Judge and other willing hands, bore the helpless, sagging form to the +car that waited at the foot of the drive with its attendants. Before +he followed the rest, Treadwell had turned and held out his hand to the +man in the convict dress, and there was in the gesture, no less than +the warm clasp, assurance man to man of steadfast silence and a +friendship that was to be without end. +</P> + +<P> +In the silent room—in a quiet that seemed curiously heavy after the +storm of ebullient passion and pain that had swept it—Echo, sitting +stirless but with every vein throbbing painfully, saw the striped +figure pass behind the big leathern screen, to emerge a moment later, +still wearing the mask but clad now in the conventional black-and-white +of masculine evening-dress. In his hand he carried a striped bundle. +He laid this on the red coals of the grate and the flames leaped up to +wind it in a mass of brightness, shaming, for one triumphant minute, +the dim light of the shaded lamp. As he stood with his back to her, +looking down upon the smouldering tinder, some trick in the posture +brought her a quick thrill of wretchedness. In the radiance she buried +her face in her hands. +</P> + +<P> +"Echo!" +</P> + +<P> +She started and looked up with a sudden wildness, for the cry seemed +weirdly to have materialised from the very substance of her longing. +The figure had turned from the fireplace—was standing before her—with +uncovered face! +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap50"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER L +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +REVELATION +</H4> + +<P> +"<I>You!</I>" she said. "<I>You—you!</I>" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes." +</P> + +<P> +With her eyes upon him she moved away with uncertain, backward steps. +When she spoke again it was with a quick breath that was like a sob, +and in a voice scarcely audible, with breaks between the words: "It +is—it was?—<I>you</I>—" +</P> + +<P> +"It was I." +</P> + +<P> +"You!" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes." +</P> + +<P> +"All—the time?" +</P> + +<P> +"All the time." +</P> + +<P> +There was a silence. She had begun to tremble from head to foot. Her +face was turned away and her hands were shaking; she clenched them +tight. Her voice fell lower, till it was the merest whisper: +</P> + +<P> +"You were the—the convict—the man—in Craig's library?" +</P> + +<P> +He came nearer. "Yes," he said. +</P> + +<P> +She put one hand to her throat. "I—don't care to understand—now. +I—I'm only trying—to realise—" She paused. The doming tinder in +the fire-place broke and fell, and for a last instant a yellow-ochre +burst of flame threw a bright golden veil about them. Two great tears +rolled down her cheeks. "Then you," she whispered, "then you know why +I went there. You could not believe that I—that I—" +</P> + +<P> +"My darling!" His arms were around her now, crushing her to him with +tender fierceness, till she could feel his heart thudding against her +breast, and the blossom crushed there held for him the scent of all the +roses of all the world. He bent his head and their lips clung into a +kiss. "Never—never—that!" he murmured, with his lips against her +cheek, "though I must be forgiven very much. I was blind. I thought +you knew—knew that it was really I there in the prison, knew and were +willing that it should be! And all the while..." +</P> + +<P> +"And I," she whispered, "I thought you had gone away, and didn't +care—any more. And all along—all along..." +</P> + +<P> +When they drew a little apart so that each might better see the other's +face, the wonder and miracle had touched them both with a kind of awe. +She looked at him with lips that were still trembling under the +startled glory in her eyes. "The day after that—that night—I went to +your office, saw my broken picture—and—the bottle. I guessed—I +guessed—" +</P> + +<P> +"It was true," he said. "I threw away my promise to you. I would have +thrown myself away with it! But it was not to be, sweetheart! I have +come back to you, dearest—dearest of all the world!" +</P> + +<P> +So they stood, haloed in the lamp-light, clinging together, swayed and +shaken, love and youth and dream melted into one golden eternity, +pouring forth tender, sweet confessions in broken words and silences, +oblivious to the passage of time, to the clamour that had begun to rise +from the rooms across the hall—to a sound that came over the tree-tops +of the avenue, blazing now with fireworks, the sound of jubilance and +marching feet, drawing nearer and nearer. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +At midnight the great porch of Midfields was hung gay with lanterns and +bunting and Harry stood watching the rear-guard of torch-bearers stream +down the drive. The battalions had gathered like magic when the +blowing of whistles announced that the returns from the crucial +counties spelled victory beyond peradventure. They had swung down the +main street, a band at their head, a shouting, jostling army, to +acclaim the Governor-Elect. +</P> + +<P> +With his friends of the long fight—Judge Allen, Brent and a score of +others—about him, he had spoken to them, a short speech full of +feeling. They, not he, had won the fight, he told them. And the +victory was an earnest of the future. But the race was not always to +the swift nor the battle to the strong; the forces they had that day +vanquished would return to the struggle, and they must be beaten again +and again till the State, and every home within its borders, was free +forever. Now the cheering was over and the throngs had trooped away +after the band, to parade the denser streets of the business section, +while the Committee lingered for an exultant aftermath in the +dismantled east room. +</P> + +<P> +As Governor Eveland stood with the Judge on the porch, looking out over +the trampled lawn, Treadwell came up the drive. +</P> + +<P> +"I thought," he said, "that you would like to know about Craig. He is +as he was before they took him abroad for the operation. It is +unlikely that there will ever be any change again, they think." +</P> + +<P> +They heard him in silence, but across the mind of the older man was +flashing a stern epitaph—"He hath digged a pit for his neighbour, and +hath fallen into the midst of it himself." Presently he sighed—his +thought had shifted to the unknown man he had pardoned that night. +</P> + +<P> +"It has been a singular evening," he said. "I am sorry Sevier was not +here earlier—when our convict came. Strange that even you, Treadwell, +should not have seen his face! I wonder," he added musingly, "if we +shall ever know who he was!" +</P> + +<P> +The Judge shook his head—the same wonder was in his mind. Treadwell's +face was inscrutable. The Governor's gaze strayed up the long porch +where at the further end a girl stood with the Governor-Elect in the +rosy glow of the lanterns. He laid his gaunt hand affectionately on +the Judge's shoulder. +</P> + +<P> +"Brave and true!" he said. "When I think of what she told us tonight, +Beverly, I have no words!" +</P> + +<P> +Treadwell broke the silence. He spoke with a little flush mounting in +his face, "I hope I need not say that I—that what we have heard +to-night—" +</P> + +<P> +But the Judge stopped him. "My dear Treadwell!" he said, in gentle +reproof. "My dear Treadwell! We are all gentlemen!" +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +The Governor-Elect and the girl who stood beside him lingered a little +longer in the shadow of the crimson rambler. Down the avenue beyond +the great gate, the flambeaux clustered and faded and diminished, the +band music had throbbed to silence and about them was only the silver, +dew-silent night. They stood in silence. The old house behind them +was full of jovial voices and laughter, and every window was glowing +with lights, but where they stood was quiet and peace. +</P> + +<P> +At length he took both her hands and laid them together, beneath his +own, upon his breast. +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +"'Hours fly, flowers die'" (he quoted),<BR> +"'New men, new ways,<BR> + Pass by;<BR> + Love stays.'"<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +He lifted the hands he held to his lips. "Do you know the one thing +that has come to me out of it all?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," she murmured, "I know." +</P> + +<P> +"It came to me in the night, last night. Up to then it had seemed +fate's whipper-in that was driving me. But then, when I saw the gulf +opening at my feet, and saw no way out, and ceased to struggle, I knew +all at once that fate is only an empty name; that it was—God." +</P> + +<P> +He felt her fingers quiver in his clasp. +</P> + +<P> +"There was an Eye that watched and a Hand that overruled," he said +slowly. "Even the evil and the hatred—the temptation, the sin and the +pain—the penalty—It overruled them all. Drink made the man who shot +Craig a criminal—yet but for that burglary you might now be Craig's +wife! Drink sent me to Craig's house that night—yet but for that +journey I could not have saved you. Drink closed the prison door on +me, but only there—I know it now!—could I have mastered it! And if I +have won in this campaign and if I sit—with you, my darling!—in the +Mansion on the Hill, it is because of what I learned within those +walls—the knowledge of what drink has done to men!" +</P> + +<P> +He released her hands and looked up into the heavens. +</P> + +<P> +"It shall vanish from this state," he said. "And it shall vanish from +this Union! I am as sure of it as if the sign of its passing were +written there in the sky!" +</P> + +<P> +She caught his arm. "See!" she said. +</P> + +<P> +Far away, city-ward, over the trees, against the deep, dark vault, the +dazzling, many-pointed blaze of a rocket paled and sank into the +darkness. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<HR> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap51"></A> + +<P CLASS="t3"> +BOOKS BY +</P> + +<P CLASS="t2"> +HALLIE ERMINIE RIVES +</P> + +<P CLASS="t3"> +(Mrs. Post Wheeler) +</P> + +<BR> + +<P CLASS="t3"> +The Long Lane's Turning<BR> +The Valiants of Virginia<BR> +The Kingdom of Slender Swords<BR> +Satan Sanderson<BR> +The Castaway<BR> +Hearts Courageous<BR> +A Furnace of Earth<BR> +<BR> +Tales From Dickens<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR><BR> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Long Lane's Turning, by Hallie Erminie Rives + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LONG LANE'S TURNING *** + +***** This file should be named 35326-h.htm or 35326-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/5/3/2/35326/ + +Produced by Al Haines + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Long Lane's Turning + +Author: Hallie Erminie Rives + +Illustrator: Frances Rogers + +Release Date: August 21, 2011 [EBook #35326] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LONG LANE'S TURNING *** + + + + +Produced by Al Haines + + + + + + + + + + +[Frontispiece: Her lips trembled, but she spoke in a clear undertone, +audible only to him, which faltered the merest trifle (Page 316.)] + + + + + + +THE LONG LANE'S TURNING + + +BY + +HALLIE ERMINIE RIVES + +(Mrs. Post Wheeler) + + +Author of "Satan Sanderson" "Hearts Courageous," "The Valiants of +Virginia," etc. + + + +WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY + +FRANCES ROGERS + + + + +NEW YORK + +DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY + +1917 + + + + +Copyright, 1916, 1917 + +By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, Inc. + +as "The Heart of a Man" + + +Copyright, 1917 + +By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, Inc. + + + + +CONTENTS + + +CHAPTER + + I THE COUNSEL FOR THE DEFENCE + II A MAN AND A WOMAN + III THE AWAKENING + IV THE PRODIGAL + V THE UNLAID GHOST + VI THE JUDGE SITS IN THE LAMPLIGHT + VII ARROWS OF DESIRE + VIII THE THRUST + IX THE TURN OF THE LONG LANE + X AFTER A YEAR + XI CRAIG FINDS HIS WEAPON + XII A HOSTAGE TO THE BOTTLE + XIII THE HEART OF A MAN + XIV THE HANDWRITING ON THE WALL + XV THE ONLY WAY + XVI DERELICT + XVII LIKE A THIEF IN THE NIGHT + XVIII THE PRICE + XIX PADDY THE BRICK INTERVENES + XX WHAT MATTERED MOST + XXI CRAIG'S WAY + XXII HARRY DECIDES + XXIII THE BROKEN PICTURE + XXIV THE WOMAN WHO KNEW + XXV ON TRIAL + XXVI THE HAUNTER OF THE SHADOW + XXVII THE END OF THE JOURNEY + XXVIII THE MAN IN THE WHEELED CHAIR + XXIX THE LONE BATTLE + XXX THE GIPSY RING + XXXI AMBUSH + XXXII THE COMING OF JOHN STARK + XXXIII THE UNDERSTUDY + XXXIV THE CRUCIBLE + XXXV SANCTUARY + XXXVI JUBILEE JIM'S JOURNEY + XXXVII THE CALL + XXXVIII THE CHALLENGE + XXXIX THE JAILBIRD + XL GENTLEMEN ALL + XLI DARK DAYS + XLII THE MENDED ROAD + XLIII THE PITFALL + XLIV THE LIGHTED FUSE + XLV THE CHASM + XLVI CRAIG STRIKES + XLVII WITH HIS BACK TO THE WALL + XLVIII THE HEART OF A WOMAN + XLIX THE GOVERNOR TAKES A HAND + L REVELATION + + + + +ILLUSTRATIONS + + +Her lips trembled, but she spoke in a clear + undertone, audible only to him, which faltered + the merest trifle. (Page 316) . . . _Frontispiece_ + +"I have answered you," she replied, "once and for all. + You will please consider it final" + +He turned his head and saw the figure in the doorway. + "Echo!" he cried and rose to his feet + +All at once the hound flung up his great head with a + low howl, then, crouching, licked the nerveless + hand that hung down + + + + +THE LONG LANE'S TURNING + + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE COUNSEL FOR THE DEFENCE + +The dark was falling over the court-room. A lurid ray of the setting +sun gleamed redly on the dust-streaked window panes, and struggled +disconsolately with the melancholy gleam of the oil lamps that an +awkward attendant with creaking foot-leather had laboriously lighted in +their wall-brackets. Their pale radiance gleamed on the painted faces +of dead jurists that looked down from fly-specked canvases on the walls +and was reflected from the mass of moving, living faces that filled the +room, whose eyes gazed alternately at the Judge's vacant seat, and at +the empty railed space that had penned in the restless jury now +considering their verdict in an upper room--to return again and again +to the spot where sat the man over whose dingy case a medley of voices +had declaimed and wrangled throughout that southern spring day. + +He sat slouched in his chair, his narrow, faded-blue eyes, strained and +frightened, fixed on the empty jury-box, his uncertain hand lifting +from time to time to give a swift, furtive touch to his collar or a +thrust to his wiry, sand-coloured hair. In the pallid lamp-light the +hard sneer that had curved his lips during the dragging trial had faded +and his face seemed all at once piteous and younger. + +To a stranger there would have seemed little in the circumstances to +inspire the popular interest the full room betokened. The accused was +a rough sawyer, known to his fellows of the logging camp as "Paddy the +Brick," with a history of sluggishness and inebriety behind him. The +crime of which he stood charged was the theft of a comrade's earnings, +the story merely one of those sordid dramas of menial life which were +so familiar. The evidence, though purely circumstantial, was, to a +casual eye, sufficiently conclusive. + +Yet in the minds of most of those who had filled the dingy court room +during the two days just passed, there had been until the last hour a +general expectation that the man would be cleared. This had been based +upon nothing save the common knowledge that his counsel was Harry +Sevier. + +The latter had never failed to justify the expectations that had +habitually heralded his doings. Young, likable, perfectly equipped and +knowing his southern world, he had returned, after a half dozen years +of foreign schooling, to step into a social niche readily accorded him +by those who had seen little of him since boyhood. His grey eyes and +crisp, dark beard, had been distinguishing marks of forebears whose +lives had been lived in that neighbourhood and who had left their vivid +impress upon the institutions of their time; statesmen, diplomats and +soldiers had been of that line, and he himself, with his characteristic +mannerisms, his unimpeachable grooming, his nice observance of the +social code, had come to be regarded as the perfect pattern of his +type. Left an orphan at an early age, he had inherited a comfortable +property and the income of a city block, and he spent the money +judiciously, if lavishly. His Panhard was the swiftest car in town, as +his offices were the most sumptuous, though ostentatiously simple in +appointment. He had a Japanese valet, and the "at homes" which he +occasionally gave in his bachelor apartment, though they might be +dominated "pink teas" by the envious unbidden, were affairs to which an +_entree_ was a hallmark. He maintained also a shooting-box on an upper +slope of the Blue Ridge--a comfortable bungalow set in a hundred acres +of wilderness--whither of autumns he and a dozen other choice spirits +were wont to fare for a fortnight's tramping and fishing, sleeping on +pungent hemlock boughs and eating homely food cooked by the single +negro servant who lived there as caretaker. He had a gift for private +theatricals--he was in constant demand of the Amateur Dramatic +Club--and had more than a _dilettante_ appreciation of music and art. + +As regards his profession, he had injected into the somewhat +cut-and-dried legal life of the old Capital an unusual and winning +element of personality and a method at variance with established usage. +His very eccentricities had set him apart from the mass, who were so +glamoured with the sordid things of life; and the apparent contempt for +material reward with which he defended poor and unknown clients as +readily as rich and influential ones had its appeal to a class which +possessed imagination and ideals. There had seldom been a case in +which he had not successfully employed a curious subterranean logic--an +apparently wilful insistence upon what seemed at first glance the +unvital and immaterial--as a preliminary to a swift _volte-face_ by +which he turned the evidence at a new and unexpected angle of +inference, and drove home the doubt with a brilliant display of oratory +which captivated and--for the moment--convinced. In the four years in +which he had stamped his individuality upon the town, not only had he +never lost a criminal case, but he had created a certain conviction +that a trial in which he figured would offer unmistakable elements of +surprise and entertainment. So that the Criminal Court had come, in a +way, to be the fashion, and the sombre chambers of justice saw many an +assemblage that would have graced another sort of gathering. + +Seldom, however, on this day had Harry's glance through his gold-rimmed +eye-glasses wandered to the benches. With many there he had danced and +golfed and bridged a hundred times. That, however, had been play; +this, which had come to furnish another and quite as fascinating a sort +of entertainment for them, was what he had chosen to make the more +serious business--in so far as anything had been serious to him--of his +life. So that his apparent disregard of this tribute to his +personality for the sober business in hand, set over against the +palpable frivolity of purpose that actuated the moiety of his audience, +was, after all, only another indication to them of that fine sense of +the fitting for which his world admired him. + +Through the long morning the evidence had accumulated. One by one the +merciless rivets had been driven home by the prosecuting attorney. The +chain of evidence seemed flawless. And Harry Sevier's +cross-examination had seemed scarcely more than perfunctory--had +appeared somehow to miss that subtle and pregnant suggestion, that +longer reach that heretofore had uncovered a hitherto unnoted but +baffling doubt. Yet to those who knew him this but pointed to a more +effective climax, a more engrossing sensation when the psychological +moment should arrive and that appealing figure arise to insert the +nicely calculated spoke in the wheel that, under the manipulation of +the state's attorney, was rolling so swiftly in its ominous course; and +on the back-benches, where sat a group of members of the Country Club, +a whispered bet that the accused this time would not get off, found as +usual no taker. + +Evidence finished, the Court rose for a recess and Harry vanished +through a side-door. Ten minutes later he was in his office. He +vouchsafed no word to the clerk who sat in the outer room, but passed +quickly through to the inner sanctum and closed and locked the door. +The self-control bred of the strenuous occupation of the court room had +slipped now from his face, leaving it suddenly strained. There were +moist drops upon his forehead but his hands were arid and dry. He drew +the blind to shut out the dull, grey, winter light and switched on the +electric desk-lamp, and as he did so his eyes turned stealthily to the +wall--to a locked cabinet whose key was in his pocket. + +They turned again almost immediately to the baize-covered desk, where +stood a plain, flat silver frame. It held a photograph of a portrait +painted by Sargent which had been a _salon_ favourite of a few years +before. It was that of a young girl, seated and leaning intently +forward from an arm chair. One hand was at her throat, the other +dropped against the dusky shoulder of a dog stretched at her feet, and +in her dark eyes was the eternal question which maidenhood asks of +life. The lines of the face were cameo-like, and its southern beauty +held that particular blend of ingeniousness and hauteur that is the +result of the selection and inbreeding of generations. He stood still +a moment, looking fixedly at it, his tongue touching his lips, before +he crossed the room and turned the picture face-down upon the desk. He +almost ran to the cabinet, unlocked its mirrored door, and took from it +a bottle and a glass. He poured out a full goblet of the gurgling +liquid and drank it off. Then he drew a long breath. + +"Yes," he said, "I'll lie to myself no more! I've got to have it or +throw up the sponge. It was my own once, that wonderful gift--whatever +it is. Once it was my own brain, unhelped, that sent the glow to my +heart and the fire to my tongue--till words had glorious colours and +pictures painted themselves out of nothing. Once it was my own mind +that saw a problem as clear as crystal. But I wasn't content. I +wanted the short cut, and this showed me the way. And now--now--I've +dropped the reins. It's not Harry Sevier that wins cases--it's that +bottle!" + +He began to stride up and down the narrow room; deep lines had etched +themselves in the mobile face. "There was the Davencourt Case," he +said to himself. "Not a shred of decent evidence to go on, and the +whole court packed with prejudice, and he was as guilty as the devil. +Yet I won! That was only a year ago, but I couldn't do it now--without +what is in that decanter! All day yesterday I was heavy, my mind was +as blank as a glacier. In the cross-examination I couldn't see a foot +before me. But for this half-hour it would go hard with my client at +the finish. As it is I wouldn't want a better foil than old Maitland +for the prosecution. How he has slaved over his witnesses! I might +have made some of the testimony that sounded so damning look like a +cocked-hat if I had gone about it in his laborious way. For this +'Paddy the Brick' has plenty of friends, for all his crookedness. Half +the logging-camp, apparently, chipped in to make up my retaining-fee. +But pshaw! what's the use? I can get him off without it. In the last +analysis it's feeling, not facts, that will sway them--feeling first, +and then conscience. Every man of them must see _himself_, first +shivering in the shoes of my thief, and then wearing the Judge's gown. +When the psychological moment comes there is only to drive home the +fallibility of circumstantial evidence and sear those twelve +slow-going, matter-of-fact brains with a sense of the inherent +perversity of appearances!" He smiled bitterly. "Especially," he +added, "when there's whisky in the story. My client was drunk as a +boiled owl when he was arrested--the stolen plunder might easily have +been put on him, as he claims it was. The jury will understand that. +There's probably not a man on it who doesn't get squiffy now and then." + +He stopped in his walk and held up a hand against the light--it wavered +ever so little. The draught had not yet brought its accustomed poise +of nerve--its tense certitude, its mental glow and confidence. With an +impatient gesture he turned again to the cabinet. "One used to do it," +he said; "it will evidently take more to-day to restore our bold Turpin +to his career on the highway!" He set the empty glass in its place +with a short laugh. + +"Curious," he said. "If he _were_ innocent and drink _had_ got him +into this scrape, there would be a poetic justice in drink's getting +him out!" + +As he turned to lock the cabinet, the bell of his desk-telephone +rang--three short, sharp rings. It was the clerk's warning that the +court was about to reassemble. He drew a deep breath, and cast a quick +glance at the little mirrored door. No tinge was rising in his +colourless face, no warming tingle in his veins. His hands were +uncertain and his fingers had an odd numbness. A keen, cold edge of +anxiety touched him. Always heretofore, when he had sat with the black +decanter, he had felt the wonderful, slow change--the gradual glow +creeping through every nerve, the tightening of muscle and sinew as for +a race, the thrilling, glad sense of renewed power and unleashed +ability and the inevitable quivering rush of lambent images in his +brain. The signal was too long in coming to-day--and he could not +wait! His hand shook as it reached again to the little shelf. An +instant he hesitated--for a breath, while the light twinkled from the +deep-cut facets, he strove to remember whether he had drunk one glass +or two. Then with a frown he poured the draught and drinking it off, +locked the cabinet, and went hurriedly out. + +When he entered the courtroom, the wide space had filled again and the +State's Attorney had opened his address--a brief one, icily emotionless +and rigidly exact--the very background upon which so often Harry +Sevier's winged words had spelled victory for a cause prejudged as +lost. And he was to reply--with the final speech for whose inspiration +he had fled to that locked cabinet in the darkened inner-office. Paddy +the Brick listened with the look of some trapped thing gazing at its +captor, sometimes turning toward his counsel a furtive wavering glance +that was blent equally of dread and dog-like appeal. These glances +were unreturned. Harry Sevier sat motionless, his eyes straight before +him. + +But behind that mask Harry's thought was turning and turning upon +itself. The sudden sharp edge of anxiety that had caught him in his +office had grown to a thriving fear. His ally was failing him. The +master, whose upper hand he had just acknowledged--whose aid had been +so freely given him in really vital moments--was forsaking him at the +turn of a wretched, second-rate case of common thievery! He realised +it with a sickening sense of wonder that mingled with a dull anger at +the littleness of the issue, and through the confused mist of his mind +his inner ear seemed to hear a far-distant sardonic laughter--as though +the Djin of the bottle laughed in the locked wall-cabinet at his dismay. + +He rose to speak for the defence with an icy clog upon his faculties, +while beneath that frozen surface the something that had been shackled +reared and struggled vainly. Vocabulary, cunning of phrase, and +logical sequence of argument had not deserted him; he realised this +with a blind rage that seemed with a singular separateness to lie +outside of himself--to associate itself strangely with the prisoner. +But the persuasion that had so often checkmated justice, the calculated +force, the insinuating tactfulness, the living, warm appeal that had +had their way in the past were absent. He had a curious feeling of +duality, as though two Harry Seviers had suddenly and painfully drawn +apart--the one whose measured voice was speaking, and the other which +clamoured and appealed, conscious only of its own deadly smother and of +the despairing face of the man with the wiry sand-coloured hair who sat +slouched in his chair beside him. + +The roomful seemed very still. The Judge was looking at him fixedly, +through bowed horn-glasses set far down on his nose. Harry was aware +that in the countenance of the state's attorney puzzle and a stealthy +relief struggled together. With desperate narrowness he watched the +faces of the jury for a sign, a tentative withdrawal of stolidity that +betokened a quickened and awakening interest. But they sat moveless +and impassive. There was a last hideous pause, in which he thought the +foreman suppressed an incipient yawn, when his own brain refused +further struggle. He knew that he had been betrayed. The door of +human sympathy would not open--he had lost the magic key. + +The reply of the State's Attorney was a mere _resume_ of the evidence. +He had needed no more. The Judge's charge was brief. Then had come +the stir of moving bodies and the buzz of whispers--the shuffling of +feet as the Judge retired and the jurors filed out--and at length the +painful hiatus with the red sunlight and the pallid lamps. + +This was broken presently by three measured raps on the door of the +jury-room, which, as the Judge re-entered, opened to admit the jurors. +They were quickly polled and the verdict given--guilty. The sentence +followed immediately. + +With the fateful words Harry Sevier turned his eyes, almost as if +suddenly awakening from sleep, upon the court-room, and met across the +moving benches a woman's concentrated and wondering look. She was Echo +Allen, the original of the portrait whose photograph lay face-down upon +his office desk. The neutral-tinted presentment, however, had been far +from realising the concrete flush of sensuous beauty of its living +original, with her straight lithe frame, her hair all a wash of warm +russets and sunny golds, framing a face perfect in contour and with a +complexion as soft as a moth's wing. And the beauty of this was now +deepened, if possible, by the shadow upon it of puzzled pain and +inquiry. An instant the gaze between them hung, then it broke as she +turned away, gathering her white furs about her throat with a slow, +hesitant gesture. With the sudden stab of shame and humiliation that +rushed through him--for he had not seen her there before that +moment--something seemed to break, too, in Harry's brain; it was the +rigid lock which had been somehow put upon his faculties. The emptying +room felt all at once a furnace, and little jerking shocks, like tiny +electric currents, were running over him, prickling to the tips of his +fingers. Intoxication was upon him, sudden and overwhelming, but he +did not recognise it. He had never been drunk, in the sense popularly +understood. He had always regarded with wondering distaste the +occasional abject surrender of mind and body to the effect of alcohol +with which he was familiar in men of his class, and the vulgar spree +filled him with disgust. He was nicely abstemious at his club and he +had never entered a saloon in his life. His indulgences, deeper and +more and more frequent as they had grown of late, had been hidden +behind the shades of his inner office, and the liquor he had drunk +there he had never carried in his legs. For him these cloistered hours +had meant no harrowing aftermath of remorse, no shrinking memory of +license or ribaldry, but only the strange mental exaltation that had +borne him to success. He sat now outwardly calm and collected, but +mentally in an odd confusion, grasping at strange alert suggestions +that were thronging about him in a lurid phantasmagoria. + +He came to his feet with a start, suddenly aware that the slouching +figure beside him had arisen at the heavy touch of the sheriff's hand. +He took a step forward, the lawyer for a moment again uppermost, the +perplexed mind groping for the conventional expression of professional +regret. But he did not speak. Instead, as the narrow, red-rimmed eyes +stared for a breath into his, Harry's outstretched hand fell at his +side and a painful blur swept across his vision. His unsober, +kaleidoscopic mind had opened to something that lay naked and anguished +beneath the haggard face of the prisoner, something no longer glossed +by sullen scowl and sneering bravado--a concrete fact, perturbing and +vaguely horrifying, which would not express itself in mental symbols. + +With hands clenched and a face like a sleepwalker's, Sevier crossed the +emptying room to the side door, where his motor now waited. "Anywhere, +Bob," he said thickly, "but go like the devil till I tell you to stop, +if it's a thousand miles!" + +As the burnished mechanism shot into pace and the cool wind stung his +face, the early arc-lights above the roadway swelled to great pallid +moons tangled in a net of stars, and in their yellow lustre the thing +he had seen in the prisoner's face suddenly shouted itself to his +brain. He flung up an arm as though to ward a blow. + +"He wasn't guilty!" he gasped. "He never did it, by God!" + + + + +CHAPTER II + +A MAN AND A WOMAN + +The girl whose gaze had for that instant found Harry Sevier's across +the crowded court room left the place with her mind in a conflict of +feeling. She was nonplussed. She had entered for that last hour +sharing intuitively the general belief that the prisoner would be +acquitted: a belief, founded like that of the rest, upon her knowledge +of his counsel. She had seen no straining for the spectacular in what +some had been wont to call "Harry Sevier's pyrotechnics," and on past +occasions on which she had heard him address a jury she had fallen +wholly under the spell of that peculiar magnetism that swayed all +alike. Aside from his continuous success in a calling with which her +whole life had been associated--her father, Judge Beverly Allen, was +Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and his father had been Chancellor +before him--with his brilliant way, his undenied leadership among his +fellows, he had been to her a dominant personality. She had not lacked +the masculine homage of a dozen others of their set, but Harry Sevier +had always been the imminent figure in her thought, and it had needed +no spoken word or promise between them to link her imagination wholly +to a future in which he reigned supreme. So that his failure to-day +had affected her strongly. + +On the dusky court house steps she stopped to exchange greetings with a +group who chatted there. They were full of the puzzle of Sevier's +failure, or laughingly rueful at their own discomfiture, and she +stopped but a moment before a negro coachman tucked her into a +carriage. As he climbed lumberingly to his seat and gathered up the +reins, a heavy, assured figure approached the curb. Cameron Craig was +big and broad and in his strong and arrogant face lines of conflict had +early etched themselves. He shook hands with her with a smile. + +"I didn't know you were in town," she said, with a trace of aloofness. + +"I'm here for only a day or two," he answered. "I had to talk a little +politics with my attorney, Mr. Treadwell. It's his busy day, it seems, +and as the mountain couldn't come to Mahomet, Mahomet came to the +mountain. So here I am at the halls of justice. It's been an +entertaining afternoon--the trial, I mean--but upon my word, I thought +at first I had strayed into a convention of the Daughters of the +Confederacy." + +She smiled, but it came with difficulty. "Oh, court has become a +social dissipation with us. It competes now with auction-bridge and +the fox-trot." + +"You tempt me to steal a purse or two," he said. "I love to hold the +centre of the stage. The only thing I've been charged with stealing so +far is an election, but one never knows to what heights he may rise. +If I pick your pocket will you come to my trial?" + +"If it were _my_ pocket, I'd have to, wouldn't I?" + +He bowed smilingly and turned away, as the coachman flicked the tossing +manes with the tip of his whip. Looking over her shoulder, while the +horses whirled her away, Echo saw his big frame swinging up the steps +into the emptying building, every move expressive of virile strength +and conscious power. + +These were traits Cameron Craig had acquired through direct +inheritance. His father had come penniless, to a small town in the +adjoining state where, with calm assurance and without unnecessary +delay, he had married the neighbourhood's prettiest girl and pre-empted +a worn-out iron deposit with a tumble-down furnace, relic of a series +of disgusted British owners. With the same certainty of judgment he +had uncovered the lost ore, developed the property till it paid a +miraculous dividend, and died. He had been a man of one idea--the +"Works"--and had known and cared for nothing else. The son, however, +with his father's force and will, had inherited, with less praiseworthy +traits, a further ambition. The young Cameron Craig's first free act +after his schooling ended was to dispose of the iron plant and to throw +his money and his brain together into a group which now stood back of +the great Public Services Corporation that held in control the vested +interests of two states, exclusive of the railroads. At thirty he was +a personality that loomed large in organised politics, and might be +depended on to loom steadily larger to the end of the chapter. + +As he entered the old building now he was thinking of the face of the +girl he had just left, with its brilliant beauty and flashing youth. + +"Why not?" he said to himself. "She has birth and breeding, but I can +match them with things the world counts as high. I've never failed yet +to get what I wanted--if I wanted it enough!" His thoughts recurred to +the trial and to Harry Sevier. "Curious that nobody seemed to guess +what the matter was--none but me. But I know what that look back of +his eyes meant. The young fool! To have that gift--every thing right +in his hand--and then to throw it away. For that's what it will come +to, sure as fate, in the end!" + +A hand fell upon his shoulder. It was Lawrence Treadwell, the +attorney, and he followed the latter into a private room and sat down. +"Have you got the new committee list?" he asked, without preamble. + +For answer the other took a closely written paper from his pocket and +handed it over. "Senator Colby sent it down by his secretary this +morning." + +Craig drew his chair to the table and began to make pencilled changes +and corrections, his hand moving swiftly and unhesitatingly. "There," +he said, returning it. "That will be better. Let the senator have it +back to-morrow." He sat a moment silent, his strong white fingers +drumming on the table. "By the way, is this young Sevier likely to +take a hand in the next campaign?" + +"I don't know," replied the other. "I've always expected him to burst +into politics some day. He has a curious hold on people--a wonderful +magnetism. To-day's is the first jury case I've ever known him to +lose. He as well as let it go by default. How he came to handle it so +beats me!" + +Craig might have enlightened him, but he did not. + +"I've concluded we don't want him," he said. "He's uneven: the trial +to-day proved that. Besides, he's too high-chinned--we can't depend on +his type to obey orders. We are coming to a big fight and we want the +docks clear. No overtures to him. We must cut out every man whose +absolute footing we can't count on till the day of judgment." + +The attorney lit a cigar and regarded its blue haze thoughtfully before +he answered. "All right," he agreed. "I should have picked him for +good material. But you're the doctor." + + +Meanwhile the carriage was whirling Echo Allen over the darkening +asphalt. The tired night lay still, watching under dusky lids, the +moon, a great blown magnolia, floating in the limpid sky. As the +horses pounded on, the coachman's voice broke in upon her revery: + +"Reck'n Marse Harry done got dat man clar, Miss Echo, lak he allus do?" + +She drew her furs closer about her throat with a little gesture as +though dismissing a baffling problem. "No, 'Lige; not this time." + +"Sho' now!" he exclaimed, looking back with his thick, blue-black lips +framed to a whistle. "Muss-a been pow'ful guilty ef _he_ couldn't git +him off. Ah reck'n dem yuthah lawyahs 'cluded dey wanter tek Marse +Harry down--he done put it ovah _dem_ so off'n--en dey jes' tek dat +'cused man, en fool eroun', en fool eroun', tell dey done _prove_ it on +him!" + +But 'Lige's sage reflection upon the situation brought no smile to Echo +Allen's face. + +At length the horses came to a great double-gate, lighted with heavy +wrought-iron lamps, opening on a curving drive, into which they turned, +to swing panting up to a wide-porched mansion set in a grove of oaks +and acacias. This was "Midfields," the home of the Allens for four +generations and of the Beverlys before them. Its wide wings and +columned front spoke of old colony days, as did its name of a time when +rolling acres of tobacco instead of suburban streets surrounded it. +Twilight was drifting thickly over it now, and the box-hedged garden, +with its plenteous rose-shrubs and wild sun-dial, was purpled with +shadow. + +Echo jumped down without assistance and ran into the hall, throwing off +her hat and coat and pausing before a glass to pat into place the +rebellious whorls of her springing, gold-brown hair before she entered +the dimly-lighted library. + +It was a wide, pleasant room, with tradition and gentle birth in every +line of its furnishing. The table held an old China lamp of gilt and +_lapis-lazuli_ blue, and the simple, colonial book-cases were of +rich-veined mahogany which held the same shimmering, tawny lights as +Echo's hair and had leaded-glass doors in key with the silver, +glass-prismed candle-sticks on the mantel-piece. A huge old English +screen of painted leather stood at one side. On the dull green walls +were framed steel engravings of the ancestral home of the Allens in +Dorsetshire and of that sturdy ancestor, in lace and peruke, whose +rugged signature is on the Declaration. The place had but one modern +touch--a splendid portrait of Echo herself that hung between two great +windows--the canvas whose photograph at that moment lay face-down in +Harry Sevier's inner office. + +In the room sat her father, the Judge, perusing a magazine. He was a +pale, placid man, straight and grey as a silver-birch, with ivory, +distinguished features that suggested an old daguerreotype and seemed +to call for a silk-velvet waistcoat and a stock. He tossed the +magazine aside as she came to him and stooping, in a swift birdlike way +she had, dropped a kiss on the top of his billowy, grey hair. + +"There you are," she chided, "ruining your poor eyes with fine print in +this wretched light!" + +She turned the reading-lamp higher and drew the curtains. As she +pulled the heavy folds together they swept from its place a heavy brass +bowl filled with Marechal Niel roses, and it fell with a crash onto a +frail Italian desk of dark rosewood quaintly inlaid with designs in +lighter colour, which sat in a corner. + +She sprang to catch it with a cry. "I'm as bad as Uncle Nelson!" she +exclaimed. "How lucky it didn't spill!" She set the bowl back and +passed a hand along the polished desk-top, frowning. "It has made a +terrific dent in the poor old thing!" she said, remorsefully. "It must +have jarred it frightfully. I'm so sorry!" She looked at her father, +who had half risen at her cry. "You were always fond of the little old +desk, though you never used it. I used to love it when I was a child. +It was so mysterious, with its tiny cubby-holes and carvings. Some one +told me once that such foreign desks always had secret drawers and I +used to spend hours trying to find one. Where did it come from? Did +it belong to grandfather?" + +"No. It was willed to me many years ago by--a friend. It was when you +were a baby." + +"How curious," she said, "for a man to choose a piece of furniture like +that! Why, it's as feminine as a toilet-table!" She came and perched +one small toe on the fender, as he asked: "Where's Nancy!" + +"I haven't seen her since luncheon. She was going to tea at Cora +Spottiswoode's." + +"Her father has written me she must come home at the end of the week," +said the Judge. "He says if she doesn't he'll start an action against +somebody for kidnapping--says nobody can fix his coffee just right but +her." + +She smiled. The two families were life-long friends and since their +boarding-school days she and Nancy Langham had exchanged annual visits. +"I'll tell her," she said. "I wish she could stay longer, though it's +lonely for her father, no doubt. I love to have her here. She's--fond +of Chilly, and I've been hoping it--might have an influence over him." + +The Judge sighed. The name of Chisholm Allen, Echo's twin-brother, was +a synonym in the city for debonair devil-may-care. With the likeliness +that kept him popular even among those staid members of society who did +not countenance his peccadillos, he combined a negligence and +dissipation that from his boyhood had made him a thorn-in-the-flesh to +his father. + +"Yes," he said, "she's fond of him. That's why I think she shouldn't +stay too long." + +There was silence for a moment. Then he said in a lighter tone, "I +wonder how Sevier's case came out. It was expected to finish to-day, +wasn't it?" + +"Oh," she answered, "he lost. The jury found against him. I was there +for an hour, just at the end." + +He made an exclamation of surprise, and stole a quick glance at her, +but she had bent down to straighten a shoe-buckle and he could not see +her face. "Ah well," he said, "it won't do him any harm to get a +set-back now and then. Perhaps he needs it. Were there many there?" + +"Half the world," she answered. "I saw Cameron Craig." + +"So he is in town, eh? I must send a note to the hotel and ask him to +luncheon to-morrow." + +She was silent and he said quizzically. "Come, my dear, you mustn't be +such a chin-tilted patrician. 'Other times, other manners.' Craig has +his place, and it's not a low one, either." + +She made a move of impatience. "He's a member of the best clubs in his +own city, and all that, I know. He belongs there. But here it is +different. We are not beholden to him. Why should we go out of our +way to treat him like one of us? He isn't, really. He may be a +University man and he may have travelled all over the world. Yes, and +I'll admit he has manners--_a_ manner, if you like--too. But there's +something that keeps him an outsider just the same. Besides, people +tell unpleasant tales about him." + +Her father cleared his throat. Gossip had been prolific in tales of +Craig as regarded the fairer--and frailer--sex. He had heard the +stories--unsavoury ones, such as inevitably cling to men, whatever +their business or social standing, who acquire the whispered reputation +of the voluptuary. He had himself, however, a singular reserve of +judgment, coupled with an impatient intolerance of scandal. Men to him +were as he found them, till the event proved otherwise. + +"I know what you mean," he said judicially. "He hasn't our traditions +and standards. That's true. He's not born to them. But this is an +uncharitable world, my dear, and half the tattle one hears is apt to be +sheer envy. He is a person of importance. He has a good deal of +influence, as well as money, and is affiliated with men with whom a +large part of my earlier life was associated." + +She hardly heard his closing words: "Influence and money!" she +repeated, with a little shrug. "Why need we bother about them! The +Judiciary, thank heaven! has nothing to do with political influence, +and as for money, I should hate to think that what we have came, like +his, from the United Distilleries!" + +"Echo!" The name fell sharply behind them. + +Both turned--the Judge a little self-consciously--to where his wife +stood in the doorway. She was already dressed for dinner and her dark +corsage set off her white neck and beautifully rounded shoulders--a +cool, statuesque woman, of unfailing poise and manner, with her grey +hair perfectly disposed above a complexion whose tinting was the +despair of many a younger matron. Instinctively the girl's hand had +crept into the Judge's arm, and insensibly the two had drawn a shade +nearer together. + +Mrs. Allen stood looking at them a moment, faintly smiling, before she +said deliberately, "That is a ridiculous way of talking. Please let me +remind you that your father was the Trust's counsel for many years, and +until he went on the Bench." + +"Oh, I forgot--" she began, distressed. "I only meant--" + +"There, there!" the Judge said, frowning. "People feel differently +about those things. You have a perfect right to think in that way, if +you choose." + +"I couldn't think anything _you_ did was wrong," she cried +passionately. "And, anyway, giving a company legal advice is very far +from being in its business. _Every one_ has to have lawyers, of +course. They defend even criminals." + +He smiled quizzically at her argument. "Well," he countered, "I'm +respectable in my old age, at any rate." He had pressed a bell as he +spoke and to the grizzled negro who now entered he said, "Nelson, has +your Marse Chilly come in yet? If he has I'd like to see him." + +The old man shook his head. "Marse Chilly done tellyfoam he won' be +home fo' dinnah, suh." + +The Judge pulled his chin, palpably annoyed, but quick to his resentful +mood, Echo laid her hand caressingly on his arm. + +"Never mind, dear," she said coaxingly. "Don't fret about Chilly." + +Mrs. Allen's voice interposed. "Chilly sent me the message an hour +ago," she said, with an accent that seemed finally to dismiss the +topic. "I think you would better dress now, Echo. Nancy has been in +some time, and dinner's at seven-thirty." + + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE AWAKENING + +An automobile speeding through the starry dark! No hesitant progress +through congested traffic, no frequent swerving for daylight wayfarers. +The city was far behind now--only the clear, well-nigh deserted road, +winding like a tremulous magenta ribbon through the swooping gloom that +seemed to shrink and cringe from the metal monster hurtling after its +golden halo through the eddying dust. + +A practised hand was on the throttle and the yellow-lined face bent +over the wheel was shrewd and keen. There had been no supper for Bob +that night and no evening at Black Joe's billiard parlour, but the +chauffeur knew his master. "Go like the devil till I tell you to +stop," the other had said, and without the word from the moveless +figure on the rear seat, he would obey till the engine stopped or his +hand went numb on the wheel. Hamlets flashed by--huddles of flaring +street-lights--then shadow and blankness again. Now and then a hollow +rumbling marked a bridge, or a jovial, beckoning doorway betokened a +road-house. Ten, twenty, thirty miles. A turn of the wheel and the +car swept into a divergent highway. Another mile and again a turn--Bob +was shuttling back and forth now, fearful of an impossible distance +from home. + +The man behind him sat as if graven in stone. At first, while his +senses instinctively resisted the intoxication, Harry had been +conscious only of blind movement, a frantic flight to escape the +unescapable. Yet his whole body was tense, his eyes never wavered, his +hand was as steady as his chauffeur's. He was sharply conscious of all +about him, every sense recording its message unerringly. He felt the +wind-flung dust, heard the chatter of the exhaust, grasped acutely at +each detail of sight and sound in the reeling panorama through which +they passed with such arrow-like swiftness, under a sky that was a +wild, blue field of silver flowers. Yet the governance of the mind, +the sole arena in which the intoxicant ravened and rioted, the logical +faculty to which sense-impression is but material, was astray. And at +length the intoxication had wholly conquered. + +And with the acknowledged dominance of the sinister thing that held +him, the mental turmoil had swiftly stilled. There had come sudden +composure--a strange, appalling peace, in which was no appreciation of +place or time or fact, but yet a curious exaltation, a sensation of +seeing not through a glass darkly, but with a further mental vision +which knew no material bars. + +Three hours, four hours--and still no sign. Bob stole a glance behind +him. "Wonder what's the matter?" he muttered. "He sure never did want +to go hell-bent-for-election like this before. Lucky I filled the tank +plumb full this morning. She's good for another forty mile, I reckon." + +As he withdrew his eyes he became aware of a red light swinging down +into the road--a railway-crossing. He threw himself forward on the +gear and with a grinding roar the brakes took hold. Plunging and +shuddering, the car stopped dead, its forward lamps jingling against +the warning bar. + +With the sudden stop Harry lurched forward. And, curiously, with the +abrupt cessation of motion and roar, the vast, vague distance through +which his mind had been shuttling, closed instantly up. The baleful +intoxication had lifted as it had come. He did not wake fully at once, +for the breaking of the spell left him in a strange confusion through +which he saw but dimly the outlines of the real present. He found +himself sitting dazed and shaken in his motor--staring at the broad +back of his chauffeur beyond which, an isolated point in the darkness +of the night, swung the angry red lantern of the crossing. He put a +hand to his forehead--what was he doing there? + +It was coming back to him. He remembered the straining trial, the hour +in his inner office--with the little wall-cabinet! He saw the crowded +courtroom, saw himself standing impotent before the bar, saw the +despairing face of the man beside him, the puzzled countenances about +him, the dim lamps. He heard verdict and sentence. He saw himself +turn to gaze into the face of the girl across the court-room--knew the +swift rush of the motor, the blazing arc lights and that final stab of +realisation! + +His lips tightened to shut back something like a groan, as there rushed +upon him a sense of horror, of disgust, of shame. The Harry Sevier he +had been--the Harry Sevier of good repute, of disdain for the +intemperate, of brilliant accomplishment and regular habit, was gazing +with horrified eyes at the Harry Sevier he had unwittingly become, the +slave of the spirit he had so long invoked, whose coarse debauch had +to-day betrayed his client, and sent an innocent man to the wretched +cell of a convict! + +He spoke. "Bob, where are we?" + +The chauffeur stole a quick glance behind him--there was relief in it. +"Penitentiary-Crossing, sir," he said. "There's the Black Maria." He +pointed to one side, where the gloomy vehicle, a wheeled ark with a +narrow barred window set in its rear, waited with its patient mules. + +The train was at the crossing now and the rumble of the brakes swelled +to a vibrant screech, the long dotted line of dimly-lighted windows +shuddering to a stop right athwart the road. A train-man with a +lantern jumped down, followed by a couple of passengers. Harry opened +the door of the tonneau and suddenly conscious that he was stiff and +aching in every joint, achieved the ground and took a step toward the +train. + +Two figures just then emerged from the glare. He saw that they were +linked together by a wrist and as the coat of one blew aside, the +lights of the motor glinted from a nickel star--the badge of a +deputy-sheriff. They had passed him, and the train was moving again to +the _chug-chug_ of the engine, when the officer turned back, biting the +end from a cigar. + +"Could you give me a light?" he asked. + +"Certainly." Sevier took a silver match-box from his pocket. + +The other struck the match, hauling irritably at his lagging prisoner, +and the red light, flaring up, for an instant showed the two faces, the +sheriff's grim and tenacious, and the one beside it--a white, dogged +face, with red-rimmed eyes and a shock of sand-coloured hair. + +Sevier shrank as though at a blow in the face. He drew a sharp breath, +for the sight pierced to the excoriate spot that lay like a live coal +in his soul. There before him stood his client of that day's trial, on +the last lap of his dismal journey, the man whom he, Harry Sevier, had +sent there! Back of this man of the law, with his gleaming star and +pocket revolver, he saw himself standing, the real mainspring of that +blatant enginery. + +The flare of the match fell. "Well, good night to you," said the +deputy-sheriff. + +"Hold on," said Harry. "Can a prisoner use money?" + +"They're not supposed to, but I reckon money talks as loud in a +concrete cell as anywhere else." + +Sevier had taken some crisp yellow-backs from his pocket and now he +held them out--to the jailbird. "Here!" he said. "Take this." + +The other looked at the bills with a suddenly contorted face, then with +a whirl of his unfettered hand dashed them on the ground. "Keep your +money!" he snarled. "I'm a thief--that's what _I_ am now! When I want +money I'll steal it!" + +The sheriff made an exclamation, and jerked viciously on the tethered +wrist. "Don't you mind, sir," he said. "You mean it well, but this is +an ugly one. Lord love you, they'll soon take that out of him over +there! Come along, you," he added to the other, pulling him toward the +Black Maria, "and if you open your face like that I'll give you what +for!" + +Sevier stood an instant looking dully after them, then mechanically +picked up the fallen bills, fumblingly replaced them in his pocket, and +climbed into the motor. He felt his face suddenly hot. In those flung +words his judicial mind recognised the indictment. From the little +wall-cabinet in his inner-office had crept a thing of shame and +humiliation to himself. He saw this now suddenly swell and grow--as +did the vapour from the fisherman's cruse--to a blighting, tentacled +thing, reaching interminably into the future, holding in its coils a +human life of pain, of desperate warfare, of social outlawry. + +He sat down on the leather cushions like one in a dream. + +"Home now, Bob," he said, heavily. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE PRODIGAL + +At Midfields that evening the late moonlight poured a flood of radiance +on the wide columned porch with its climbing roses where Echo sat on +the step, chin in hand, absorbed in her own thought. She was alone. +Nancy had slipped off to bed, her mother had retired to her room and +her father to the quiet of the library and his reading. + +From the kitchens she could hear the muffled clash of table-silver and +the strident voice of Aunt Emily the cook, grumbling at Nelson: +"Yo'-all hurry erlong wid dem ar fawks, now! Speck ah's gwine wait +heah all _night_, yo' triflin' trash, yo'? Yo' heah me--yo' ain' +blind! What yo' 'spose Marse Bev'ly _pay_ yo' fo', anyhow?" From far +down the road, beyond the gates, she could hear the faint twang of a +guitar and the refrain of strolling, darky voices: + + "Reign! Reign! Reign-a mah Lawd! + Reign, Marse Jesus, reign! + Reign salvation in-a mah soul, + Reign, Marse Jesus, reign!" + +These died away with the sharp, eager bark of a dog. Then at length +distinguishable sounds faded and there was only the deep, somnolent +peace of the southern night, with the scent of the roses wreathing the +garden with their intense, mystical odour--only the faint stirring of +little leaves playing hide-and-seek with their shadows, and the thin, +fairy tone-carpet woven by the myriad looms of night insects for near +whispers to tread on. + +Since that homeward ride she had had no time to ponder upon the event +of the day. At dinner the trial had been touched upon but casually. +Now that she was alone, however, it had rushed uppermost in her +thought. It was not that Harry Sevier had lost the verdict: but his +speech had seemed to her, in the tension of the crisis, with a man's +honour and liberty at stake, inconsequential and almost flippant. And +in the measure of her disappointment she had realised anew the depth of +her regard for him. Again and again she pictured the scene in the +courtroom but each time her thought returned upon itself, baffled and +puzzled. + +At length, with a long breath that was almost a sigh, she stirred, and +rising, passed into the library where the Judge sat in the arm-chair by +his reading lamp. "You're a disgraceful night-owl," she said, "and I +refuse to keep you in countenance any longer." + +He smiled at her. "That's right, Sorrel-Top! It's time for +beauty-sleep if you and Nancy are off to ride in the morning. Just +give me my eye-shade, will you, before you go?" + +She brought the green crescent and snapped it on his forehead. "There! +You haven't told me how you like my dress to-night. It's a new one." + +He looked. "It's beautiful." + +She turned about before him. "I do choose well sometimes, don't I?" + +"You do everything well, my dear." In his tone now was a quaint and +curious humility which always touched her when she discerned +it--something of utter fondness and dependance--and she smoothed his +iron-grey hair, one of her characteristic endearments, as she kissed +him good night. + +Upstairs Echo opened the door of her room softly. It was hung in +blue--that shade which one sees in a Gainsborough ribbon, a Romney sash +or a Reynolds sky--and its furniture was of simple white, with large +pink dahlias trailing over the chintz window-curtains and +chair-cushions. In the dim night-light the triple mirror of the +dresser reflected the carven four-post bed, in one of whose pillows +Nancy's dark head was already buried. + +"Is that you, Echo?" + +"Yes, it's I. Were you asleep already?" + +"Almost," yawned Nancy. "I _shall_ be in two shakes of a lamb's tail. +Has Chilly come home yet?" + +"No, not yet." + +"Do you think he's really at the club, Echo?" + +"Of course I do." + +"Men are so queer!" sighed Nancy, drowsily. "We had such a lovely +evening--all except Chilly's not being there." + +Echo slipped off her gown and drew out the pins from her hair, letting +it fall in a shimmering cloud to her waist. Then in the moon-light she +drew a deep chair before the open window and began to brush out that +wonderful mass of stirring gold that curled and waved about her bare, +round shoulders. Below her the garden lay, a mass of olive shadows, +wound in cloudy golds and misty greens, sprinkled with moon-dust and +drenched with the dizzying scent of roses and honeysuckle. All was +lapped in the utter quiet of the night--only the swift wing of a +night-bird shook the darker clump of ivy that marked the sun-dial. A +long time she sat there, the brush parting and smoothing the bronze +mesh with long sweeping movements, gazing into the whisper-haunted +gloom and listening to the measured breathing of the girl behind her +that seemed to form a rhythmical current for her own thoughts. + +All at once in the hush there came the clashing of the gate at the foot +of the drive and jovial "good-byes," mingled with a hilarious voice +asseverating that its owner had had "the time of his young life." + +She bit her lip. "It's Chilly!" she whispered, with a frowning look +over her shoulder. + +She listened intently. There was the crunch of an uncertain step on +the gravel, the sound of a stumble from the porch--then the slamming of +the front door. + +The dulled sound reverberated through the old house. It roused Nancy +and she sat upright in the drift of silken coverlets, her eyes heavy +with sleep. "Is it Chilly?" + +"Yes. He has just come in." + +"Is he--?" + +"I'm afraid so, dear." + +The younger girl caught her breath. "Oh, I hope your father has gone +to bed. He's so hard on him!" + +Echo turned. "How can he be otherwise?" she said, sadly. "It's so +often and often it happens, nowadays. Won't you try and influence him? +He cares for you, darling!" + +Nancy's hands were clasped tight about her knees. She stirred +uneasily. "How can I, Echo? A boy has to have a little bit of a good +time once in awhile. I wouldn't want him to be a molly-coddle! He +won't be any the worse for it when he gets older and settled down." + +"The worse for it!" The words fell sadly. "Don't you think he is the +worse for it already? He's making no progress with his law-study and +he's been two years out of college, now. There's nothing to blame but +his drinking--and the company he keeps. What will be the end of it? +Oh, Nancy, you have a responsibility. Every woman has with some one +man. If women only wouldn't countenance it as they do!" + +"But, Echo--you talk as if Chilly was--as if you thought he was doing +something disgraceful. Why, he's a gentleman; he _couldn't_ be +anything but that, no matter what he did!" + +Echo came to the bed and sat down beside the other. In her filmy +night-gown, wound in the mist of her loosened gold shadowed hair she +looked like some ethereal thing in the moonlight. + +"Ah, that's just what so many say! That a gentleman is a gentleman +whether he is drunk or sober! It's not so with other things. Is a +gentleman a gentleman whether he lies, or cheats at cards, or not? +Isn't there to be any standard, really? Don't you see that there never +will be any penalty--as far as drinking is concerned--until women +_make_ it? Listen, Nancy. The year I came out, I went to a dance--my +first big one. There was a boy there who followed me about all over +the floor. He wanted me to dance with him, and he was--he could hardly +walk. At first I was frightened, but at last I grew angry. I asked a +lady why he was not asked to leave the floor. She seemed quite +astonished and indignant. 'But,' she said, 'don't you know who he +_is_? That's the son of General Moultrie!' It was Cale Moultrie. You +know what became of him, don't you?" + +"Yes." Nancy's voice was muffled. "But Chilly--" + +"Oh, my dear, there was a time when Cale drank no more than the others, +and everybody liked him--as they do Chilly. It's coming to be the same +with him, I'm afraid. There's no penalty for him yet because he's +Chisholm Allen--because he's father's son!" + +She stopped, caught by the sound of a sob. In another moment her arms +were around the frail little body and the flower-like face was pressed +hard against her breast. + +"I don't care if he _is_ d-d-dissipated," said Nancy passionately. +"I'd rather have him come to me d-d-drunk than any other man sober! +He's just Ch-Ch-Chilly, all the same!" + + + + +CHAPTER V + +THE UNLAID GHOST + +On the ground floor of the old house all was silent save in the +dining-room, where a single electric bulb threw into garish relief the +dismantled table with a bowl of fern glowing like a fountain of +emeralds against the dark wood. It lighted the Chippendale sideboard, +before which Chisholm Allen confronted old Nelson, the butler. A +cut-glass decanter of sherry was in one hand; the other was alternately +fumbling uncertainly with the stopper and pushing back the persuasive +fingers of the aged negro. His straw hat was tipped awry, his face was +flushed and his eyes unnaturally bright. He was laughing immoderately. + +"You old black stick-in-the-mud!" he said. "What's the matter with +you? Think _you_ own that decanter, eh? Well, you don't, not by a +long shot. _I_ do--Chris'mas present from the Duchess. Hope to die if +it wasn't. Leggo, you virtuous old chicken-thief, and give me a +tumbler!" + +"Now, Marse Chilly!" The low voice was deprecating and appealing, and +there was love in it too--the deep, changeless affection of the +old-time negro for his white master. "Yo' _knows_ yo' don' want no mo' +dat ar. Yo' done had er plenty at dat ole club down town. Ef yo' tuck +away any mo' now, yo' gwine have er haid lak er rainbar'l on yo' +shouldahs in dee mawnin'! Yo' _knows_ yo' is!" + +Chilly's hand dragged at the black detaining fingers. "What do _you_ +know about heads? Take your fool hands away, I tell you! I'm only +going to take a couple of swallows." + +"_Ah_ knows dem ar swallers," pleaded the old man. "Yo' go erlong tuh +baid. Hit's long pas' midnight. Marse Bev-ly's in dee lib'ry." + +"Oh bother!" said Chilly irreverently. "He's gone to bye-bye long ago. +Shut your face or you'll wake him up." + +"Fo' dee _Lawd_, Marse Chilly!" stuttered the old man. "Ah heahs him +comin' _now_! Ah sho' does!" + +"You can't bamboozle me!" laughed Chilly. "Old Huckleberry's been +snoozing this hour! If he does come, you and I'll drink his health. +Eh? Wonder what he'd say!" + +He was not to be left in doubt, for at the moment the hall-door opened. +His father stood on the threshold. He was dressed and the green +eyeshade was on his forehead. + +"We will dispense," he said in a tone of quiet hardness, "with a +ceremony which, however filial, is somewhat ill-timed. Nelson, I think +you needn't wait up any longer." + +"Yas, Marse Bev'ly. Yas, suh." The old man went to the door, +hesitated and came back. "Is yo' sho' yo' don' want nothin' else, +Marse Bev'ly?" + +"Nothing further, Nelson." + +"Yas, suh. Good night, Marse Bev'ly. Good night, Marse Chilly." This +time he went out, closing the door behind him with exaggerated caution. + +"Come now, Judge," said his son, still mirthfully. "There's no masonic +funeral going on in the bungalow, is there? Can't one have a harmless +night-cap without being excommunicated?" + +His father looked at him from under the green shade with gloomy +disapproval. The address did not tend to mend matters; his son was +wont to reserve the judicial title for moods of especial mellowness +such as to-night's. He noted the flushed face and sparkling eyes, the +general air of goodnatured recklessness that so clearly spoke the +nature of the other's evening's pleasure. + +"We'll discuss that to-morrow." He crossed to the wall and laid his +hand on the electric switch. "Good night." + +Chisholm still smiled without apparent resentment. "I guess you +weren't ever as young as I am, Judge, anyway. You seem to think I'm a +rotten bad lot just because I like to take a glass now and then and go +out with the boys. You drink _your_ mint-julep all right enough. And +I'll bet whoever you had to dinner to-night took as much as I've had +under my vest. The only difference is _I_ haven't had any dinner. It +does make a difference, I assure you." + +His father's hand was still extended to the wall. "I said good night, +Chisholm." + +Chilly shrugged his shoulders. "Oh, what's the use?" he said +listlessly, and went unsteadily out by the rear door. + +The Judge snapped off the switch, and putting out the light in the +library, ascended the stair. The hard look had deepened on his face. +As he gazed at that nonchalant epitome of ribaldry he had thought of +other men who had so often been grouped about the table in that +room--men of tempered habit, of standing and achievement. His own son +had contempt for such company. It bored him. He preferred to "go out +with the boys" and to come home in the small hours--as he had to-night. +So he was thinking as he entered the room above. There he stopped in +surprise, for across the threshold stood his wife. She was in her +night-gown, over which she had thrown a robe of pale crepe with lace at +the neck and wrists. Her face showed a heightened colour and her lips +were trembling. He drew forward a chair. + +"I thought you were asleep long ago," he said. + +She declined the seat with a gesture. "I heard your voices. What did +you say to Chilly?" + +"I said 'Good night,'" he answered heavily. "That was about all." + +Her lip curled. The glance she gave him was critically cold. When she +married Beverly Allen she had loved him--in so far as she had been +capable of loving. To her marriage had meant the assumption of woman's +predestined place in the social fabric, the inevitable change of habit +which time brings to all, with its widened orbit and opportunities. +She had been drawn to him by every instinct of selection which took +count of name, standing, worldly endowment and mental equipment; but +there had been behind it no throb of maidenly impulse, no thrill of the +great current that feeds the romance of the world. The one point at +which life for her caught and focused had been the son, whose +misconduct stood so sharply out against the spotless Allen name. He +was her one weakness, her love for him an unreasoning passion that had +swayed her from his birth. To her his transgressions showed as venial, +his delinquencies as but the forgivable errors of youth. The few +instances in which he had been openly called to task by his father had +been sharpened in the latter's memory by her resentment. But on none +of these occasions had her husband seen her so moved as now. He did +not know that for many minutes she had stood on the dark landing +listening to the murmurous voices, and that now she resented what +seemed to her a deliberate evasion. She spoke with slow, even point: + +"As a monologist Chilly is a distinct surprise. Was he saying 'good +night' also?" + +Under the unaccustomed anger of her voice the Judge's pale face +flushed. He took off the eyeshade and set it on the table, as he +replied evenly: + +"Chilly is not himself to-night, Charlotte. Does it matter +particularly what he said?" + +Beneath his voice now there was a kind of subterranean compassion, a +note almost of entreaty, as though in this trouble that touched them +both he could have wished to comfort her, if, indeed, she had made that +possible. + +She made an involuntary movement--not a sign that a chord had been +touched, but rather a mark of agitation. Chilly was the one subject +upon which she could not bring to bear the tempered reason which +otherwise marshalled her even life. It seemed to her now that she was +being thrust aside, in the interest of some new plan of discipline and +coertion. She turned swiftly on her husband. + +"I suppose you think it should make no difference to me!" Her eyes +blazed. "You are so sure you understand Chilly! You--his father--have +you ever really known him all his life? Does he ever come to you when +he is in trouble or needs advice?" + +Her voice held a bitter sarcasm and again the flush swept up the +Judge's pale face. But his voice was emotionless as he said, "Chilly +never felt the need of advice from any one. He goes his own sweet way." + +"That is just it!" she said. "You set yourself so far above him. You +have such a contempt for his pleasures and so thoroughly despise the +company he keeps. Suppose he has a taste for liquor. He is still a +gentleman, I believe. But you, with your solemn rectitude and your +touch-me-not self-righteousness--you would drive him to the very people +and places he ought to keep away from!" + +He stared at her. "I have never regarded my repugnance to his habits +as inducing him to further excesses," he said slowly. "Nor have I set +myself up as preacher. Perhaps I have never understood him as--you do. +I only know that his ways are not my ways. He has had every advantage +that education and environment can confer. He is older than I was when +I began practice. But what is he making of his life? He thinks of +nothing but playing fast and loose at country-houses and loafing at the +club and acting the fop and the fool generally!" + +Her shaking hand was plucking at the lace at her throat. His every +word had been a live coal laid to her resentment. "Is that the worst +you can say of him?" she asked. "Can't you call him sot or black-leg?" + +"Not yet." He was feeling now a dull anger at her scorn, at her +persistent disapproval. The throb of sympathy he had first felt had +been frozen by her icy reproach. "There are other things I wish to be +able to say of my son. I want him to be more than a decorative +philanderer. I want him to be a man--one to whom men may look for +manliness, and women for honour!" + +She had grown pale to the lips. "'And women for honour!'" she +repeated. "As _I_ looked to--_you_!" + +He had flung out his arm with a characteristic gesture, but at her last +words it suddenly stiffened and remained, as if it had been frozen in +the air. Slowly it dropped at his side as he stared at her with ashen +face--a look of shocked and disconcerted inquiry. For the exclamation, +as at the swift slash of a blade, had torn away a veil, woven of time +and habit, that covered an old wound. For twenty years by tacit +consent this hidden thing of the past had never been acknowledged by +any word or deed between them. Now a single sentence had laid it bare, +quick and quivering and mutually confessed. They had been married +twenty-two years, and if in that early period he had discerned any lack +in her, he had given her no reproaches. On her part, she had fulfilled +what she esteemed her whole duty, and in her own mind stood blameless. +And he had had his profession. But in the end starved nature had +reasserted itself. There had come to him a passion, swift and terrible +while it lasted, to which he had surrendered wholly--till death swept +it from him. The gall and wormwood had been sweetened then by the +birth, in merciful coincidence with that loss, of his twin children. +He had thought the episode buried forever from sight and hearing, but a +later chance had discovered it to his wife, and in her own +immaculateness she had been able neither to forget nor to forgive. It +had made no difference in her life before their world. Cold and +perfect and correct, she had held her way, but from the day when she +had faced him with his secret in her hand, their hearts had been +strangers to one another. He had climbed high and she had risen with +him. And in twenty years no word had fallen from her lips to open that +old tomb--till to-night when the heavy doors swung ajar at the echo of +that one exclamation. + +"As _I_ looked to--_you_!" There it was--the old ghost, called up to +haunt his present as it had waylaid his past. His hand fumbled for the +discarded eye-shade and adjusted it as he slowly said: + +"I have never counted myself a pattern, Charlotte--least of all for my +own son." + +She caught the note of pain and weariness now in his voice, and +something new and unaccustomed stirred for one brief moment in her +heart. She had struck harder than she had intended. But she had lost +control at a critical moment and old bitterness, that had never been +tinctured with the sweetness of charity and forgiveness, had sharpened +her tongue. Now his shocked white face smote her with a sense of +self-reproach whose very strangeness threw her momentarily off her +poise. For a fleeting second words trembled on her tongue that might +have dissolved the icy barrier between them. But the golden second +passed. + +"That is generous," she said with a distant laugh. + +"No doubt Chilly will profit by experience, if not by precept. Shall +you be at court to-morrow?" + +"Yes," he answered. "I have a hearing." + +"You will prefer the horses, then," she said, turning to the door. "I +will take the electric for my shopping. Good night." + +He opened the door for her. "Good night," he said. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +THE JUDGE SITS IN THE LAMPLIGHT + +In the silence of the room the Judge stood for a moment with his hand +at his lips, as though he tasted blood. The summer night outside was +very still. The curtain before one of the windows swayed gently in the +air and from the acacia trees on the lawn he could hear the sleepy +twitter of an oriole. He turned off the light and went into the hall. +There at one side stood the white, panelled door of his wife's room. +It was shut. It came to him that it stood for a perfect symbol of that +cold immaculateness of hers which had so long denied him the living +bread of sympathy. She could forgive anything in her son, but nothing +in her husband. For twenty long years they two might have dwelt at +opposite ends of the Milky Way, and it seemed to him suddenly +monstrous, whatever the cause, whosesoever the fault, that they, being +man and wife, should yet be so far apart. + +He went slowly down the stair again, his hand, shaking a little, +slipping along the polished banister. The dim night-light made the +lower hall a place of ghostly shadows. He re-entered the library, +moved to the table and turned on the reading-lamp. Then, lifting it to +the limit of its silken cord, he threw the electric glow upon the +canvas that hung above the mantel, studying it intently. + +"Mine!" he muttered, with a sort of fierce satisfaction. "Mine, every +inch--mine, not Charlotte's! My blood gave you that curve of brow and +those full lips and that deep, dark blue of eye--they are of my side, +not of hers! You, at least belong to me!" + +He returned the lamp to its place, and turning, cast his glance at the +little Italian desk in the corner. His lips trembled. At that desk +she had sat--the woman knowledge of whom had sharpened the sword of his +wife's never-dying disdain. The woman who had come into his life too +late! He thought of their meetings, few enough, indeed. How often he +had wondered how life would have turned for him, if at the end she had +listened to his desperate pleading, and gone with him along that +alluring way that had drawn him like an opal path among Italian +asphodels, flinging to the winds social standing, reputation, career, +friends, honour, all! If she had said "yes" to that wild letter he had +sent her--the one to which she had vouchsafed no reply--which might +have been written in his very heart's blood! + +He looked again at the painted portrait of Echo, in her splendid youth +and clean heritage: the answer was there. + +He sat down before the little desk, stretched his arms upon it and +bowed his head upon them. "You were right, Eleanor," he sighed. "You +were right. But somehow it's been so long!" + +He felt a fluttering touch upon his hair and started up. There before +him on the desk lay a faded leaf of paper--a page closely written over +in twirly, dim writing. He lifted it up and held it to the light, his +nostrils catching a scent wraith-frail and delicate, like a dead +pansy's ghost-- + + +No--no--no! Why did you write it? Why did you put it into words? For +now I must keep it always. I cannot destroy it. You _knew_ I would +not--_could_ not---let you do what you beg me to! Never, never! I am +not so mad. Nor are you, really. It is not your best self speaking in +this letter. Sometime-- + + +His gaze became fixed. He gave a hoarse cry--a mist was before his +eyes. He snatched at the top of the yellowed sheet--it was dated +twenty years before, and the hand-writing, how familiar! He laid the +leaf flat in the lamp-light and read it through, with every nerve +throbbing to a memory that had started afresh, as instinct as though +days, not years, had sifted their dust upon it: + + +Sometime you will thank me--will think of this only as a ghastly +indiscretion from which you were caught away in time. We do not make +the world we live in, and it is a thousand times stronger than we are. +No, if we play the game we must stick to the rules. To think of +overstepping that boundary, in such a desperate fashion, gives my +fastidious sense a strange recoil--something like that curious shame +and confusion that associates itself with a dream in which one finds +one's-self scantily clad in the midst of wondering strangers! No--no! +I do not think I shall send this letter--but perhaps I may at the end. +For I am going away. I sail to-morrow. Shall I see you +again--ever--ever? What will you think-- + + +That was all. It broke off abruptly as though the writer had laid it +aside, never to be finished. + +In the silent library the Judge looked at that mute witness as at one +risen from the dead. Twenty years of absence and silence--twenty years +out of his ken, save to the thriving memory! For how long the hand +that had penned those lines had been dust, yet the poor symbols of ink +and paper persisted to confront him now! How had the sheet come to be +on that desk that she had bequeathed him? It had not lain there a +moment before. + +He brought the lamp and examined the desk attentively, pulling out +every tiny drawer, sounding each carved partition, twisting and tugging +at every projecting portion of the ornamentation. With a thin, metal +paper-knife he explored each warp and crevice. But his search was +fruitless. If the leaf had slipped from some crack--loosened, perhaps, +by the fall of the brass bowl upon it that day--the old desk kept its +secret. + +A strange feeling stole over him, the feeling of mystery that comes to +one with some sudden apposition of incident that thrills with a sense +of an overpowering meaning in a circumstance in itself banal and +trivial. Something of her proud and passionate spirit she had etched +into those lines. Might it be that spirit, somewhere in the great +void, reached out to him through this silent witness--to say that love +does not wholly die? + +He gently spoke her name. "Eleanor! You forgave me for writing--that. +If you hadn't you wouldn't have left me this desk when you--died, away +over there in Florence! So I've got your letter at last." + +He sighed again and groping for his big chair, sat down, with the sheet +of paper spread out upon his knee. + + +On the upper floor Mrs. Allen tapped lightly on Chilly's door and when +there was no answer, opened it softly and entered. At the whisper of +his name he started up in bed. + +"Duchess!" he exclaimed. + +The pet name, as always, touched her. It was a perennial tribute to +that stateliness and dignity which she had made her own. She came and +sat down on the edge of the bed and he caught her hand and held it to +his lips. "You shouldn't have come," he chided. "You'll take cold." + +"I heard your father talking to you," she whispered. "You--you know +what he dislikes so. Why can you not be--discreet?" + +Chilly moved uneasily: "Oh, I know," he said. "But I can't always be +giving an imitation of a quaker meeting! I'm not a child." + +"You must not anger him," she said. "I--for my sake, I wish you would +be more careful." + +He patted her hand. "All right, Duchess! I'll mind my p's and q's. +But you must go back to bed now. Don't you worry about me." + +She bent down and kissed him on the forehead before she glided from the +room. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +ARROWS OF DESIRE + +"Here is the new rose," said Echo. "Its name is the Laurant Carle." + +Cameron Craig looked--at her, not at the blossom. She was in simple +white and as she stood there in the perfumed garden, vivid, elemental, +tuned to the wonder and passion of living, her slim figure outlined +against the dark green shrubbery and her face and gold-bronze hair +touched with the slanting sunlight, she seemed herself some great, +rare, golden flower in a silver sheath. Lines he had somewhere read +sprang into his mind: + + "Bring me my bow of burning gold, + Bring me my arrows of desire," + +and, contained man that he was, he caught his breath at the sudden leap +in him of the thing that had been covered and hidden there so long, +something fine and keen as flame, that set his habitually cool blood +beating under his eyelids. + +"It was not the rose," he said. "I had another reason in asking you to +come here." + +"Yes?" Her voice was evenly inquiring. + +"It was to ask you if you will marry me." + +She took a quick step backward; a look of amaze had sprung to her face. +"I?" she exclaimed. "You want me to--_marry_ you?" + +"Yes. Is there anything strange in that?" + +She looked away. In all her thoughts of the man before her there had +not lurked this possibility. She had been bred among youth who, +whatever their other vices, maintained a chivalric ideal of womankind +which excluded fast-and-loose conduct; and the whispers that clung +about Cameron Craig--set, as they were, over against his force and +undeniably brilliant attainments--had lent her opinion of him a certain +cold contempt. And now here he was--he of all men!--saying this to +her! And it was no hasty impulse: she read that in the steady, +confident eyes, the hard, heavy jaw, the steadfast, deep-lined face. + +She felt his waiting gaze. "No," she answered, slowly. "Perhaps it is +not strange. It is only that the unexpected seems so." She looked at +him curiously. "Why did you ask me--to-day?" + +"The opportunity came," he said. "It must have, sooner or later." + +"So you have intended for some time to say this to me?" + +"Since I first met you, a year ago," he answered. "You have two things +that I want--as I have their complements." + +She considered this a moment. "Forgive me," she said then, "but I am a +very curious person--as well, it seems, as a very blind one. Would you +mind telling me what are those two qualities that you imagine I +possess, which you value so highly?" + +"Breeding, first," he replied, "and all that it implies. You represent +a stock." + +She nodded gravely. "And the other desideratum?" + +"Beauty. You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen." + +"And--the complements of these things, that you possess?" + +"Money," he answered. "And the power it gives--the accessories which a +woman like you must have if she would really live. I think you don't +doubt that my wife shall have these things." + +She shook her head. "Not in the least. Indeed, I am sure she will. +But you see, Mr. Craig, I happen to be not at all the sort of person +you think I am--the kind you wish to marry." + +"I'll risk that!" he flung her. + +"The proof is that you ask me--as you have. The things you have to +offer seem overwhelmingly attractive to you, no doubt, but I'm afraid +they mean much less to me." He could not see the look that was in her +face now, for her head was turned away. "I have no longing for money. +I could be contented in a mountain lean-to, with morning-glories +instead of an orchid conservatory. I could cook my own meals on a +gas-stove and live in one room over a hardware store--with the man I +loved. I don't care particularly for what you call 'place' either. I +could be happy enough on a prairie--with the man I loved. But love +must be there, Mr. Craig." + +"Do you doubt my love for you?" he asked. + +"You had not cited it," she rejoined, calmly. "You spoke of money +first--" + +"Because I have lived long enough to know that it is the paramount +requisite in most women's eyes." + +"Your estimate of me by the mass was flattering," she said with gentle +satire. "Have you been so busy making this wonderful money of yours +that you think it can take the place of everything?" + +He made an abrupt, almost angered, gesture. "Surely you know money +means--has meant--nothing to me!" he exclaimed. "I am rich, yes. I +dare say I could buy and sell almost any one you know. But it was +never the main thing. It was _winning_ that counted. It was the game, +and money was only the counters. I played to win and I have won. And +wealth was a stepping-stone to other things." + +His voice had subtly altered and he drew closer to her where she stood, +moveless and straight against the dark foliage, her gaze averted. +"Then--I met you! I have known many women, but they have been nothing, +less than nothing, to me! Business has been the only thing that really +counted. But since I met you, the whole world has been changing for +me. Even my work isn't the main thing to me any more. The main thing +is _you_!" + +She lifted her eyes, wide with the swift sense of the +unexpected--touched now with an odd, disquieting prescience. His voice +was no longer the cold, even voice of the Cameron Craig she had known. +There was passion in it. She saw his big hand tremble. + +"There has never been a day or hour since then when I have not wanted +you! You have entered into my blood and my brain, and the want of you +has coloured all I have thought and done! If this is love, then I love +you--Echo, Echo!" + +She shrank perceptibly at the name on his lips. "Stop!" she said. +"The love you talk of must be mutual. I do not--care for you in that +way. I never could!" + +"That makes no difference to me!" he protested. "I know what I want--I +always have. And I want you." + +"No," she said. "It is not the real _me_ that you want, but we can +pass that by. The important fact is that you have offered your last +price and the bid is declined." + +He looked at her with a sudden flash in his eyes. "Do I deserve that?" +He had grown pale to the lips. + +"Yes, you do. I have told you that I should never love you. Yet that +means less than nothing to you. You have apparently not considered my +possible love as a requisite in the case. It is 'breeding' you want, +and beauty--and for that you make your offer. You propose purchase, +not exchange, Mr. Craig. Well, I am not for sale!" + +He flushed to his hair a dark, heavy red. He appeared to be +controlling himself by a fierce effort. "Don't answer me now," he +said. "Let me speak to you again later." + +"I have answered you," she replied, "once and for all. You will please +consider it final." + +[Illustration: "I have answered you," she replied, "once and for all. +You will please consider it final"] + +A whirl of what seemed almost rage shook him; with a single stride he +reached her and seized both her hands. "Is there--another man?" There +was what startled her now in the harsh, hard voice. + +She stiffened. "Well," she said, "--and if there is?" + +At the chill quiet of her voice all the vicious strength and +intolerance of the man blazed out. "You are right!" he said savagely. +"It could make no difference to me! I will not take your answer--do +you understand? In time you will give me a different one. I have +waited for other things and I have had them in the end. I can wait for +you!" + +He released her hands--so violently that she fell back a step. Then, +while she stood regarding him in shocked and indignant amaze, summoning +all her forces to meet this fury that had both astonished and repelled +her, his face swiftly changed. The flush of anger ebbed, the flash +died in his eyes. + +Once again his accustomed self, with the steady, confident eyes and +swing of shoulder, he drew aside to let her pass and followed her along +the box-bordered path to the piazza. + + +As they entered the blue-parlour, a lady very smart in black-and-white, +and a sailor-hat whose girlish brim youthened her mature beauty, rose +from her seat with Mrs. Allen and Nancy Langham, Echo's house-guest, a +slight, glowing girl of nineteen, with eyes like marigolds in shade. + +"Well, Echo," she said, "I thought you never _would_ appear. I just +ran in to remind you that you and Nancy promised to come to my dinner +to-night at the 'Farm.' I've asked some of the youngsters out for a +little dance afterward." She smiled a brilliant recognition to the +heavy figure behind her. + +"Mr. Craig!" she exclaimed. "So you are in town! How nice it would be +of you to come too. Or do you find country-club gaieties too stale and +unprofitable?" + +He bowed over her hand. "My dear Mrs. Spottiswoode!" he said. "This +is my lucky day! I shall be more than delighted!" + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +THE THRUST + +The "Farm," as the Country-Club was popularly known to its habitues, +was a long, three-storied structure of red brick on the selvedge of the +southern suburb, set in a grove of maple trees facing a lake whose +still depths were stirred by budding water-lilies, like the breasts of +young girls. With its golf-links, and tennis-courts and its ball-room +which formed an L at one side, its white, balustraded verandahs, it was +the favoured resort of both the frivolous and athletic; its monthly +dances were the gayest of the season's informal functions and on +Saturday evenings its row of little dining-rooms, that looked out on a +gentle slope of shrubbery and gravelled walks pricked out with paper +lanterns, were favourite resorts for small dinner-parties. + +Mrs. Spottiswoode's dinners were apt to have a pleasurable sprinkling +of youth and sobriety and to-night the dozen of the younger set found +sufficient foil in the fashionable rector of St. Andrews in clerical +dress relieved only by the tiny amethyst cross that swung upon his +waistcoat--in Senator Peyton, party-whip at Washington and one of the +state's distinguished citizens, with piercing sword-grey eyes under +brows as black as midnight--and finally in Cameron Craig. + +As Echo Allen had said to her father, the latter was not "one of them." +The phrase to her had been an instinctive expression of that subtle +sense of caste that had been born in her, springing from long lines of +gentle ancestors that linked back beyond the days of the Old Dominion. +But the distinction lay deep in the mental formula of the man: it was +not to be perceived in externals. To-night, in his faultless +evening-dress, with his keen, strong face and assured manner, he had an +air even of distinction that well became him, and the instant's painful +embarrassment that Echo felt as her hand touched his in their first +greeting yielded quickly to an unwilling admiration of his poise and +control. If that flare of passion in the garden had left its traces, +they had been successfully covered. He was once more the Cameron Craig +she had known--till yesterday. + +But beneath that unruffled exterior Craig's every pulse was in tumult. +At table he found himself opposite Echo. The decorations were red +roses and in a ruby gown with a single rose in the coil of her tawny +hair, she seemed to him an inherent part of the scheme, a ruby pendent +to the rich, shimmering setting. There had been many women to whom he +had been passingly attracted--his tastes had been catholic enough in +that regard! But he had never seen one whom he had wished to marry. +He had spoken truly when he said that the women he had known had really +meant nothing to him. His licenses had been but incidents after all. +They had not ministered to the mental side of his nature, whereas this +passion had taken swift and complete possession. As he saw her now, +her cheeks flushing to the glow of the candles and her eyes like softly +lighted sapphires, he felt open wide within him an abyss that thronged +thick with distempered imaginings. There was another man! She had not +denied it. And with the thought there grew in him a slow, cold hatred +and determination. + +Yet his face, as Echo glanced across the roses, betrayed no sign of +disquiet. He was apparently listening amusedly to the small-talk of +his partner, Nancy Langham, in a gown of pale gauze that made her look +like a small, eager tiger-lily caught in a hampering cloud. In the +interstices of conversation Echo could catch whiffs of her laughing +nonsense: + +"Isn't Dr. Custis quite _wickedly_ handsome for a rector! I've been +instructed _not_ to ask him if he is related to Martha Washington. The +man across from Mrs. Spottiswoode is Richard Brent, he is 'The Herald,' +and a power in the community, I believe. Our hostess is wearing the +new wave; it costs a lot, but they say it's guaranteed to last six +months. And to think," she sighed, "that Melissa, my maid, spends a +dollar a week trying to have her wool ironed _straight_! The man with +the goatee, who looks so Spanishy, is Mr. Horace Leighton, the New York +artist who is doing the mural paintings for the new City Hall here." + +"So there isn't any one here who isn't anybody!" Craig observed. + +"Only me," she said. "The reason I'm asked is because I'm frivolous. +I'm supposed to offset the feast of reason with bubbles and froth." + +"At any rate," remarked the senator, "seriousness is not to fall in +arrears. Down at the other end they have actually got to politics." + +Echo's glance followed his. Their hostess was holding a glass of wine +between her eye and the candle-light, which splashed a bright crimson +ray on her pretty face. It was the rector who was speaking: + +"As for myself, I'm afraid I'm a friend to all the old, hackneyed +arguments. 'If meat maketh my brother to offend,' you know." He +pointed to his wine-glass, which, with the arrival of the soup, he had +turned upside-down. "You see I am consistent." + +"Politics?" queried Echo. "It seems to be only teetotalism." + +"Ah," the senator answered, "but it's coming to be the same thing +nowadays." + +"One understands the individual objection on moral grounds," said Mrs. +Spottiswoode. "That's a matter of personal belief and conscience. And +the Church must be above criticism--must take the sterner course. But +for those of us who don't think it wrong, the other arguments seem +so--so local. I suppose drinking does keep the negroes from doing as +much work as they might, but it's hard on the rest of us to have to cut +our cloth by the farmer's pattern! We here, for example, at this +table, are to go without our sauterne because he has trouble in getting +in his tobacco." + +"Exactly," agreed the churchman. "The greatest good of the greatest +number. And isn't that true democracy, after all? But of course the +agricultural problem is the least of it--there are the figures of +poverty and crime. The two are twin-brothers, of course. And drink is +the father of them both. Will, character, determination--a man with +these may overcome the habit. But these are just the qualities that +men in the mass lack. When a weak man falls our system keeps him down. +I once heard Thomas Malcolm--every one here knows of him and his work, +I presume--say that for the average drunkard to reform with a saloon on +every corner is about as easy as to hoist one's-self out of hell by +one's boot-straps. I'm inclined to think he is right. And I never saw +a drunkard yet--a real Simon-pure drunkard, I mean; not a mere +sophomoric tippler--who wouldn't jump at the chance to reform if he +could. But he has no more chance of winning out now than a gambler +against loaded dice." He paused, with a little gesture. "But then," +he added, "the modern political movement for prohibition has made every +one familiar with the basic arguments." + +Treadwell, spruce young corporation attorney and cotillon leader, +looked up interestedly from the other end of the table; the hostess's +fan had begun to flutter--a sign of agitation. For Cameron Craig's +affiliations with the great Trust were well-known, though presumably +not to the clergyman, who had met him for the first time that evening. +Craig, however, seemed quite unconscious of personal implications. + +"Do you seriously think, sir," he asked, with the faintest trace of +irony, "that the statistics of crime would be materially lowered in +your state if it went 'dry' next year?" + +"I do," replied the rector with emphasis. "And not only lowered. They +would be practically wiped out. There wouldn't be enough left to +constitute an item in the appropriation for public printing." + +"Naturally, however," Craig observed, "as the state has always been +'wet,' exact data is lacking to assist one's speculations." + +"On the contrary," said the other. "Every jail furnishes them. I +think," he went on, turning now to Treadwell, "that it is the +experience of every criminal lawyer that liquor, in some phase or +other, has been back of the larger proportion of cases he is called on +to defend." + +The young man nodded. "I never had any experience in criminal cases," +he said, "but I should think you were not far wrong. What do you say, +Brent?" + +"I agree with you," the journalist answered, "but my view of course is +a superficial one. It is a pity that Harry Sevier isn't here; we +should have got a valuable opinion." + +"You may be gratified then," said the hostess. "Though Mr. Sevier +couldn't come to dinner, he will be here for the dancing." + +The senator spoke. "Sevier! I heard him in court yesterday." + +"So did I," commented Nancy, aside. "I gave up an auction-bridge for +it, and I wish I hadn't. It wasn't exciting at all." + +Mrs. Spottiswoode looked relief--at last the talk had shifted to safe +ground. "He lost the case, I hear," she said. "I wonder what was the +matter. Wasn't he in good form?" + +The senator looked thoughtful. "In one way, yes," he replied +judicially. "I confess, though, I had rather expected something +different, but just what I scarcely know." + +Nancy turned her small, piquant face. "_I_ know. We all expected Mr. +Sevier to do what he has done so often--but didn't to-day. Oh," she +exclaimed almost angrily, "while he was talking along, like a machine, +I could have shaken him!" + +"That _would_ have furnished the sensation!" said Treadwell. "And I +should think it might have had its effect on the jury, too. Juries +_can_ be intimidated. I wish you had tried it." + +She made a little face at him across the nodding roses, then turned +more earnestly to her partner. "I don't know anything about court +matters or criminal trials, but from where I sat I could see the man he +was defending. He looked so hopeless and--scared! I wanted to stand +up and scream across the room: Can't you _see_? Look at the poor thing +there! Make the jury _feel_! You were thinking the same thing too, +Echo, I could see it in your face." + +Echo lifted her eyes. In the candle-light her cheek held a rising +flush. She looked across at the rector. "What do you think, Dr. +Custis?" she asked, evenly. + +He responded promptly. "Perhaps the explanation isn't so far afield. +I presume the man had confessed to him and Sevier knew he was guilty." + +Echo was conscious of a wave of relief at an explanation so simple and +credible. It had never occurred to her to question the accuracy of +other verdicts Harry had won in the past. Each had seemed to her the +triumph of a just cause over a baleful combination of circumstance, the +brilliant freeing of truth and innocence from entangling error and +maleficent scheming. But if this man was guilty and Harry had known it +beyond question, what other outcome had been possible? At the moment +she saw in that even, cold presentation of the court-room only the +conscientious determination of the lawyer, who, as the law prescribed, +stood by his client to demand that justice, if she must exact her +penalty, prove conclusively every jot and tittle of her ground. + +Craig's eyes had been regarding her steadily. With the spreading of +that flush upon her cheeks a covert, laughing allusion that had come to +his ear on the court-house steps on the day of the trial darted to his +mind. A cool, keen certainty rushed through him. Sevier! Fool that +he was not to have thought of him before! This young _flaneur_--and +drunkard!--this petty trifler with his profession! Was that white +indignation of the garden, this vivid flush, for _him_? He leaned +forward, his heavy voice, intense and well modulated, addressed the +clergyman: + +"An interesting hypothesis, but the implication seems hardly safe. A +lawyer's responsibility to his client is a very grave one. He owes +none toward the commonwealth--the state's attorney takes care of that. +Any less conventional view should appeal to a lawyer, I think, as +dangerous and uncalled-for." + +"What do you fancy was responsible for Sevier's method of defence in +this case?" asked the rector. + +There was an instant of blank silence. The conversation had absorbed +the lesser talk and other voices were hushed. Craig's look was set +upon the long oval damask with its glistening silver and baskets of +brilliant fruit, its leaf thin glasses with languid beads rising in +their liquid amber, its knots of fern and bonbons. His big fingers +were twisting the stem of a goblet. When he spoke it was as though he +had not heard the question. + +"I attended a trial once," he said, "at a frontier town in the far +southwest, a border community where procedure is very primitive. The +man was charged with murder. He was a school-master, I believe, and in +a quarrel with some local bully or other, had killed him. I was in the +place on some land-business and went to the trial for mere amusement. +The whole neighbourhood was there. Both men, it appeared, had been in +their cups, and self-defence seemed an adequate plea. Acquittal was +regarded as fairly certain--the more so as the District Attorney was +the bosom-friend of the accused man, and everybody knew it. There was +almost no attempt at evidence, which didn't seem surprising under the +circumstances, and the state made the baldest farce of its +cross-examination. The real interest came after a rather long recess +that preceded the final speeches. The prisoner's counsel was a young +man with a rough, direct address that caught the people. He had them +pretty well with him, too, and when he sat down there seemed very +little reason why the jury should even leave the box. The speech had +been a fairly long one and as it had grown dark, candles had been +brought in and set about--two on the judge's desk and some on the +tables." + +Echo repressed a start. It had come to her suddenly that there was a +significance in what he was saying--a suggestion that a quick +clairvoyant sense told her was principally for her. In the few words +he had, with apparent unintention, sketched the actual scene in the +court-room of the day before, and while reversing its elements, was +picturing, in unfamiliar guise, its identical situation. She felt her +face slowly harden, and turned her profile toward him, her hand playing +with a spray of fern beside her plate. + +"During the whole speech the District Attorney had sat in his chair, +with his chin in his collar and his eyes closed, never moving. When +his turn came he didn't rise; in fact, it was clear that he had been +asleep. A laugh went round and the sheriff put a hand on his shoulder +and shook him. He got up, looking confused, and while he blinked at +the candles, some one in the audience called out, 'Never mind, old man. +If you can't make a speech, recite a poem.' It was curious, but the +remark seemed to give him a clue, and he began to recite Hood's _Eugene +Aram_." + +Craig paused a moment and sipped from his wine-glass. All at the table +were leaning forward intently. Treadwell was frowning at his plate. +No one spoke; only a fork, dropped from Nancy Langham's fingers, +rattled against the cloth. + +"It was a strange sight," went on Craig, "and one I have always +remembered. You must picture the crowded court-room, the gloom, the +flaring candles, and the whole uncanny episode, to realise the effect +that was produced. The man was by nature a marvellous actor--he would +have made his fortune on any stage. At first it seemed as if he didn't +know quite where he was, but then the ballad itself gripped him and he +rendered it, acting each line, as I never heard it before or since. I +had never realised what was in that poem. Very few there, I suppose, +had ever heard it in their lives, and they listened in a fascinated +silence while he rolled it out to the last line. + + "'Two hard-faced men set out from Lynn, + Through the rain and heavy mist, + And Eugene Aram walked between + With gyves upon his wrist.'" + + +He paused again. "Oh, finish!" gasped Nancy Langham. "I don't like +that story. What then?" + +"When he ended he walked out of the court-room without waiting for the +verdict." + +Echo's head turned toward him. "They found him guilty!" exclaimed Mrs. +Spottiswode. + +"Yes." + +"And you say the District Attorney was his best friend?" asked the +artist. + +"So I was told." + +"And yet wanted to convict him?" + +Craig shook his head. "No, I didn't say that." + +"Then what," inquired the rector, "do you take it, inspired him to such +an extraordinary action?" + +"Oh," said Craig, and as he spoke, for the first time he looked full at +Echo. "It all came out afterward. He didn't realise what he was +doing. He was drunk." + + +For an instant Echo's breath stopped. In the unexpected denouement she +had guessed, as at a lightning-flash, Craig's real purpose. Sharply, +baldly introduced, the tale stood forth intrusive and malicious, an +implied slur upon a man who was not present to refute it. Her whole +being flooded with fierce resentment, mingled with an angry amaze that +of all there no one else seemed to have caught the insinuation. To the +rest it had been at most a _gaucherie_, a parallel which, if perhaps +not felicitous, had been without significance and would be readily +forgotten. Therein lay the added sting, that Craig had so accurately +judged the outcome. He had guessed how it stood with her and Harry +Sevier, and counting on her keener sensitiveness where the latter was +concerned, had barbed his shaft for her alone! + +The next instant, however, the tension broke with every one talking at +once. From this babble the senator emerged with a negro story about a +trial with "exterminatin' circumstances," which brought a ripple of +laughter, and presently the hostess gave the rising signal. + +The room opened upon the ball-room from whose further end already came +the squeak of tuned catgut, and beyond this spread the invitingly cool +verandas, now beginning to fill with filmy gowns that showed pallidly +against the evening dusk, where the bouquet of masculine segars mingled +with the dewed scent of shrubbery. Here in the increasing numbers, +unobserved as she thought, Echo stepped down onto the cool dark turf +and following one of the little meandering bush-bordered paths, came to +a rustic bench over which a paper lantern threw flickering +rose-coloured shadows. On this she sat down, struggling to regain her +lost composure and grateful for the sense of quiet and the cool +inspiration of the water, over whose margin the moonbeams danced in +elfish ecstasy. + +In another moment, however, the silence was broken. A step sounded on +the path, and she looked up to see Craig standing before her. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +THE TURN OF THE LONG LANE + +Echo came to her feet, all her blood on fire. In her resentment it had +seemed to her that by very silence she had made herself party to that +slur upon the man she loved, and she had been aching fiercely to repel +it. + +Craig tossed his segar away. He made no apologies for having followed +her from the piazza. "May I sit here and talk to you?" he asked. + +She remained standing. "Mr. Craig," she said with quiet emphasis, "I +am glad you have come to me here. I have something to ask you which I +could not have asked you--there." + +He bowed and stood waiting. + +"I fancied," she went on, "in certain of your remarks at the table a +lurking innuendo. It is difficult to reply to such a thing. You would +make it possible if you would put it in a more direct form." + +"Your own observation does not appear to err in directness," he +answered, after a pause. "I am afraid I must ask you to descend to +plain English." + +"In the course of the dinner you told a story." + +"Henceforth I shall congratulate myself on my skill as a _raconteur_." +His tone was mildly ironic. + +"It seemed to me--and I think I am of average intelligence and not more +fanciful than most--that by that story you intended to convey, an +insinuation against the reputation of a gentleman whom I do not care to +hear maligned." + +He looked at her with smouldering eyes. He was feeling admiration for +her quick, hot southern blood and resentful spirit. It was part of +that splendid type of womanhood that he had determined to make his own. +And that it was now displayed in defence of the man whose weakness he +despised and whose personality he hated filled him with a dull, +glooming fury. His lips twisted. "Maligned?" he repeated, in an +accent that was a question. + +"That was my word," she said steadily. + +"You appear to attach an extraordinary importance to my tale," he +retorted, with grim sarcasm. + +"Do you deny that there _was_ innuendo?" + +He smiled. "I can endure even that suspicion, since it is such a +compliment to my own subtlety. May I ask, in my turn, in whose +interest you so valorously take up the cudgels?" + +"Your story directly followed a reference to Mr. Henry Sevier's +handling of a case in court here. The unexpected outcome of the trial +in your tale was due to the fact that its chief character, though no +one realised it, was under the influence of liquor. The implication +seemed obvious--that Mr. Sevier was not himself when he conducted his +defence." + +He shrugged his shoulders. "You are the only one who has drawn such a +conclusion?" + +Her pale face blazed. "Oh, I understand! You intended the inference +for me alone!" + +"Well?" he asked, with aggravating calmness. + +"Did you insinuate that, or did you not?" Her pent-up anger was +tearing now at her self-control. + +He laughed, a short, jarring laugh. He felt an insane desire to seize +that slender, unyielding body in his great arms, to rain kisses on that +vivid, scornful mouth with its short upper lip, and bend or break her +like a sapling to his savage will. "Suppose I did," he said stonily. +"What then?" + +"That was a contemptible act!" The young voice cut like a whip-lash +and involuntarily Craig's big fists clenched. "And if I were Mr. +Sevier, I would horsewhip you!" + +A sound from behind them fell across the surcharged quiet. Both turned +astonished faces--Echo's quivering with feeling, Craig's set and +stormy--upon the man whose name had just been spoken. Neither had +heard his step as he came quickly along the grassy path, nor had Sevier +guessed the situation till those pregnant sentences sent the blood from +his heart. He had thought the secret of his failure unsuspected. The +realisation now that one, at least, had guessed the truth had been +instantly swallowed up in the bitter knowledge that it had fallen to +her--the one woman in the world--to defend him, who was undeserving! + +Craig regarded him with a veiled smile that was half a sneer. The +apparition had come at a fateful moment. Then his glance passed to +Echo. "May I ask," he said, "whether you have yet cross-examined Mr. +Sevier?" + +He bowed and went quickly up the path toward the lighted piazzas. + +There ensued a silence in which two minds travelled far. Echo had sat +down upon the bench, her face averted. Her anger had faded out and her +heart was hammering at the thought that Harry had heard, in her defence +of him, what was in truth a confession. Across the aching interval +broke the wanton bubble of a whip-poor-will. + +"Echo--" he said in a muffled voice. + +She looked up at him in the feathery light. "You heard--I wish you +hadn't. Yet I couldn't help it! That ridiculous slur! But you can't +possibly imagine that--that any one who knows you--" + +He stopped her with an abrupt gesture. "Wait. I want to--I must tell +you something." + +"No, no!" she protested. "You shall not! I need no assurance. Do you +think that I--" + +He shook his head. But for that last sneering look of Craig's, that +satiric challenge, he might have maintained a silence that would have +seemed to her only a proper pride in himself and a deserved contempt +for the whisper of malice. But the look and sneer had flicked him on +the raw, had called to some element of naked honesty deep within him. +In that second he had known, shame-stricken, that whatever the outcome +there could be no evasion between them. There must be the truth. He +was no longer what he had thought himself, but he would be no +malingerer. + +"Thank you," he said, "for that! Yet what Craig wished you to +believe--was quite true." + +She stared at him unbelievingly. "True!" Her lips formed rather than +spoke the word. + +"Yes. I _was_ under the influence of liquor. But for that I should +have won the case, I believe." + +"But," she faltered, "I don't--understand. Why, I never saw you +in--that condition in my life! I was there. I--I heard you speak." + +"It is not the first time," he said steadily. "Nor the second, nor the +third. Liquor helped me to win my cases. I thought I had made it my +slave when it had made itself my master. This time it failed me. And +I--I failed my client," he added bitterly. + +She did not catch the note of pain, of deep contrition in his voice. +Her own hurt was too keen. She only heard the high-built structures of +her own ideals crumbling down about her feet. "So Craig was right!" +she said under her breath. + +"Don't think it is easy for me to tell you this," he went on. "It is +because I must. All my life I have cared very little what others +thought. But--you--I care what you think. I never knew how much till +now, when I have thrown your good opinion of me in the dust!" He bent +and took her hands. "Echo, is it the death of your ideal of me?" + +Her lingers trembled in his grasp. Pictures were flashing before her +mind--frost-stung October days when they had galloped with the baying +hounds, over the blown, tinted leaves and russet fields--winter +skating-parties on the frozen river, summer dances like that of +to-night, for which the music was now swinging a hundred yards +away--always it had been she and Harry Sevier. He had been so superior +to the blandishments of the smaller vices. Others had failed and +fallen; only he had remained on his pedestal, a type of brilliant +accomplishment. She saw now his success as unenduring, fictitious, his +talents besmirched with the vice that was most hateful to her. "Not +the first time, nor the second, nor the third!" In their own circle +she had seen the dreadful cycle more than once repeated--the slow, +baleful fastening of habit, the struggle, the piteous, ignoble yielding +and the final slipping down to degraded depths from which there could +be no resurrection. There was Chilly, her own twin-brother, with his +feet set on the same primrose path. And now was it to be Harry Sevier? +She shuddered and drew her hand from his clasp. + +"I--see," he said, in a slow, even voice. "You can't trust me." It +was not the Sevier that had kissed her hand who spoke now, but one whom +that gesture seemed to have flung an infinite distance from her. + +"Can you trust yourself?" she asked. + +Harry's tongue touched his lips--as it had done in his inner office on +the day of the trial, when he stood looking at her picture on his desk. +Since that day he had known no breath of the periodic craving. But +now, curiously, he felt his mouth growing all at once arid and dry with +the old slinking thirst. _Could_ he trust himself? The question +seemed to thrust itself at him with a malevolent significance. How +much of his will had he indeed, surrendered? Did he know? + +There rose up suddenly in him a savage resolution. Not another drop +upon his lips--never, never! Not for the sake of success, not for his +very life, never so long as he lived! + +He took her hands in both his own, leaned down and kissed them. Then, +without a word he went rapidly from her. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +AFTER A YEAR + +Lawrence Treadwell, the attorney, sat in his office negligently smoking +a segar and staring down through the open window upon the busy +thoroughfare beneath. Outside was the spring sunshine and the smell of +growing trees. Just across from the building stood the city's new +Opera House, over whose ambitious entrance was still stretched a canvas +sign advertising a mass-meeting held the evening before under the +auspices of the Civic Club. + +He read the lettering reflectively as he blew out clouds of the +fragrant, opalescent incense: "Protest Against Machine-Rule." He +smiled. The old revolt of the Quixotic handful against the entrenched +forces that had governed the city for a generation--one more of the +popular ebullitions which punctuate modern progress, the familiar +periodic dust-storms from whose turmoil the Old Guard emerged, moveless +as ever in the saddle, to a new campaign dictated by the mighty +Over-Lord, the great Public Services Corporation which, through its +multiple ramifications, assumed to control the state's franchises, to +dictate its significant legislation--even to influence its judiciary. +As he read the words on the canvas bellying in the breeze, his smile +was cynical. + +Yet the smile had a touch of wistfulness too. The movement had grown +out of the general unrest, the keener public conscience, that had +accompanied the political renaissance that in the past year had been +sweeping over a dozen commonwealths. In the old southern city, wherein +principles were not yet become mere hypocrisies and folk still +preserved old-fashioned political ideals, it had attained to the +prestige of well-known names and engaging personalities. Their +forefathers had been men to whom honour and cleanliness in public life +had meant all things and who had governed as naturally as they had +breathed. And there were many among these to whom the new era, with +its open sneer at public trust and its subservience to great +aggregations of wealth selfishly employed, had become an increasing +reproach. The man who gazed down from the office window had long ago +made his choice. He had no illusions. He knew to what allegiance he +owed his present position. It had been the reward of long and faithful +service! Yet sometimes still the bonds chafed--sometimes still the new +spirit that was stirring abroad struck through his ingrained habit, +calling to him to do the impossibly fanatical thing! + +There was a knock at the door and a man entered. It was Cameron Craig. +He responded briefly to the lawyer's greeting and coming to the window, +stood a moment beside him, looking down at the hurrying wheeled +traffic, the loitering pavement pedestrians--and the flapping canvas +sign. He laughed a little, but without mirth. + +"You were there, I suppose," he said. + +Treadwell nodded. "Yes. It's tilting at the windmills, of course." + +"They began too late," said Craig grimly. "The ticket is safe enough +this year. But next year--the Gubernatorial campaign--if they only had +fire enough to keep the blaze going till then, they might give us +trouble." + +The other did not answer. His eyes had rested briefly on Craig's face, +then again had sought the window. He was thinking that his visitor had +not changed for the better during the past two months. The fact, +indeed, would have been apparent to a casual eye. The virulent force +and will were no less noticeable, but there was now a kind of glaze +over his face--a certain fierce and sullen quality that seemed a +reflection of inner bitterness. + +The judicial eye clove to the fact. Since that far-away night at the +"Farm," Craig's passion had never loosened its grip. It was +characteristic of the man that he had on that occasion played the only +card in his hand, not blindly, but by instinct and without hesitation. +But while he had apparently gained his point, it had been borne to him +gradually that his very method of play had lost him infinitely more +than he had gained. In the mind of the woman he desired he had +transgressed the rules of the game, and the realisation maddened him. +Never since then had he heard her name coupled with Harry Sevier's. +Never had he seen them together. This had given him satisfaction. But +if he had shattered her regard for the man whom he now hated more +tenaciously than he had ever hated anything in his whole life, the fact +had seemed to hold no advantage for himself. On several visits to the +city, he had invented reasons to call at the Allen house, but he had +soon learned that he was not to meet Echo there. He had, however, seen +her elsewhere more than once--when her gaze had gone by him as if he +had been empty air. Though his veins burned with the fever of the +famished, he had not ventured to challenge that cold aloofness. But it +had rankled and stung him almost beyond endurance, till he had come to +thirst avidly for some kind of test between them--for action, whatever +the result might mean. And the fierce desire that raged within him, +feeding on itself, had left its sinister traces on his face. + +Abruptly Craig withdrew his gaze. "I see young Sevier held forth last +night. The last time I heard him was in court, just a year ago. The +young fop! He'd do better to stick to his lawbooks--though I hear he +has no cases anymore." + +"It's his own choice," the attorney answered coldly. He liked Harry +Sevier and he resented the other's tone, no less than the words. "He +could have a new client every day if he wanted. As a matter of fact he +hasn't taken a case since the one you speak of. He fought for six +months trying to get through an appeal on that. It was the first +criminal case he had ever lost and it cut him up some, I fancy. Of +course it's ridiculous to take it so to heart, but I swear I can't help +liking him for it! He's not merely a fop, either. In my opinion he +comes mighty near being just what that crowd at the Civic Club have +been looking for." + +Craig's eyes had not left Treadwell's. "In what way?" he asked. + +"As a spokesman. They know what they believe and what they want to +fight for. But they've been inarticulate. Most of them are +blue-blooded old fogies, with their souls full of fine ideals, but with +no leader. In him (and in that speech of his last night he threw in +his lot with them absolutely) they have a finely trained legal +mind--for with all his old fire-works Sevier always had that--and a +natural orator besides. You should have heard him last night! For two +hours he held that great audience in a perfect spell. 'The finest +exhibition of southern oratory since the war' the papers called it this +morning, and I tell you, Craig, they weren't far wrong!" + +He stopped, somewhat embarrassed by his own enthusiasm, and wondering +at the dark look on the other's face. Perhaps to hide this, Craig +turned away. His fingers were twitching and for an instant he was not +wholly master of himself. When he spoke, however, he had regained his +governance. + +"After all, it wasn't the future of this anti-machine campaign that I +came to talk about. There's something nearer home that is worrying me." + +"What's the trouble?" + +"The Welles-Scott case decision. It is to be handed down on the first +of May. It must be in our favour." + +The other looked surprised. "But surely it will be." + +"It's not on the cards. I thought I knew the Judge, but there are +signs that I'm afraid of." + +The attorney sniffed incredulously. "Judge Allen!" he exclaimed. +"Why, the trust made him. And it keeps him made, I should think, too." + +Craig shook his head. "He's been talking lately. We've had warnings +from some who are very close to him. This decision _must_ be what we +want it to be. Voters are thinking more than they used to. If these +Civic Club people keep up the agitation--particularly if they link on +to the prohibition movement, as they are likely to do--the distillery +may become a live issue in the next state campaign. That's the great +danger. And this Welles-Scott case strikes at the heart of the matter. +If the Trust loses this decision it will be the signal for a crop of +bills in the next legislature that will cost us a cool million to +fight. And they may lead anywhere. I tell you we _have_ to have it!" + +The other mused a moment. "The Judge, of course, can't be reached +in--in ordinary ways." + +"Of course not. He's not venal. We've been able to depend on him so +long because he has grown up with the Trust--he was its counsel for +many years--and its interests were his. He thought with it. His mind +ran in the same groove. But Beverly Allen, the Trust's counsel, and +Judge Allen of the Supreme Court are different propositions. I always +thought this test case was a mistake! But I was overruled. Well, +we've got to have the decision. If one way won't bring it about, +another shall. Something will have to--persuade him. He must have a +weak spot. We must find it, that's all." + +"His life's been an open book, if that's what you mean," said the +attorney, slowly. + +"Few men's life are open books," returned Craig, with cynical +shortness. "There's apt to be a page pasted down somewhere. That part +of it is your business. If there's any such page in his case, you find +it! I don't care how small a page it is, or how long ago it was pasted +down. If it's there I want it!" + +"His record was combed with a fine-tooth comb when he went on the +bench," said Treadwell. "The Trust wanted a man that the opposition +couldn't get anything on. That was before your time, of course. I +went over the report myself. There wasn't anything there--nothing but +the vaguest suspicion of an old love affair that was polished off +twenty years ago." + +Craig turned sharply. "A love affair! After his marriage?" + +"Why yes, I think so. But there weren't any details. And the woman +died abroad long ago." + +"What was her name?" + +Treadwell looked at him curiously. A faint flush had crept over his +face. "See here, Craig," he said, "after all, there's a limit to +decency. At the most it was nothing but a passing infatuation--an +innocent one. There was not the faintest breath of scandal. And as I +told you, the woman is dead." + +Craig's eyes were boring into him. "Treadwell," he said in a hard +voice, "you don't seem to understand. This is a big game, and there is +no limit! None! And I intend to win it! _What was her name?_" + +The other leaned to knock the ash from his segar. There was a tense +pause before he replied. "I have forgotten." + +"Where are the old reports?" + +"They were destroyed." + +Craig looked at him an instant, his eyes like sparkling points of +steel. He opened his lips to speak, but he did not. Instead, with a +shrug of incredulous contempt, he caught up his hat, turned to the +door, opened it and went out. + +Treadwell listened to the heavy footsteps descending the stair. Then +he went and shut the door. + +"The hound!" he said under his breath. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +CRAIG FINDS HIS WEAPON + +From his chair in the library at Midfields that night, just beyond the +circle of radiance cast by the big reading-lamp, Cameron Craig looked +steadily at the Judge from under his bushy eyebrows, as the latter said: + +"Yes, it is true that I was for years affiliated with the interests you +represent. I was their attorney. The connection ceased when I, +myself, severed it, eleven years ago." + +Craig's lips, that had been set in a hard line, parted in a satiric +smile. He was leading doggedly up to what he purposed to say. "To its +profound loss," he said from the shadow. "You had cogent reasons, no +doubt." + +The other mused a moment, his pallid, scholarly face averted. "I'll +tell you, if you like," he said at length. "But you will understand +that I challenge no one else's convictions. I assume to sit in +judgment only upon my own." + +Craig nodded. "Of course." + +"I made the connection we are speaking of," continued the Judge, "when +I was a young man, just beginning practice. The liquor problem was +young then too. Communities did not take it too +seriously--particularly in the south where drinking was a matter of +course with gentlemen. The white-ribbon movement was in its infancy +and John B. Gough had hardly been heard of. To me--to the men I +knew--the 'temperance' agitation seemed a mere recurring fad, fostered +by pious and well-meaning persons, which cropped up--a kind of moral +seven-year locust--at periodic intervals. People lived more or less as +their grandfathers had lived before them on their plantations. And +their fathers had been fox-hunting, hard-living 'three-bottle men' +right down to the war. I had all the habits and prejudices of my +class. Liquor seemed to me like many another thing that was made to +minister to individual weakness, but was not in itself obnoxious. And +the decanter was never empty on my side-board. Yet even then the new +element in politics and in every-day life--the sentiment against +liquor--was growing. Times were slowly changing, men's outlook was +changing, and I knew--long before I admitted it to myself--that I was a +part of an industry which the best thought of the community no longer +approved, and that men who championed it were swimming against a +deepening and strengthening social current. I was stubborn, but at +last there came a day when I--changed too." + +His voice had softened, had suddenly become surcharged with feeling. +He leaned over the table and caught up a small oval photograph, set in +a black-leathern frame. It was a picture of his son Chisholm, as a boy +of perhaps fourteen. He held it out in a hand that slightly trembled: + +"That is why I changed, Craig. One night Chilly came home--drunk. I +had never seen him intoxicated, had never guessed that he could so far +forget himself. He was a mere boy, at school! In that moment the +sharp truth came to me. Shame stared at me from my own door-step. I +saw the text of the sermon that had been preached into my deaf ears--in +my own son!" + +He broke off abruptly and set the picture back on the table. When he +spoke again his voice was more even: + +"That hour, as I sat here in this same room, I--saw. Could anything +else have opened my eyes? Perhaps not. But that did. I saw all at +once what I had been bolstering. It was no longer a theoretical +question of the harm of the club-bar and the corner saloon to the +community. They were making a drunkard of _Chilly_! The Trust +furnished their stock-in-trade. And I had been the Trust's paid +tool--a part of its brain in this state--had guarded it from error, +shown how far it could go with impunity under the law, had even made +possible its organisation as it exists to-day! I, Chilly's father! +That night I wrote out my resignation as counsel. I mailed it before I +slept." + +There was a slight pause. Craig's lowering look had been watching the +other curiously. The emotion in the older man's voice had touched no +chord of response in him. Rather it roused contempt--not for the son, +whom he considered a brainless weakling, but for what seemed to him an +arrant attempt to evade the issue that stood so sharply and insistently +in his own mind. To him no man's motives were pure. The man before +him had been not the Trust's servant, but its creature. Had not the +Corporation, behind all, set him on his high seat? Was he fool enough +to think that he--Craig--was not aware of that? It had expected him to +pay in kind, when the need arose, as now it had. And did the other +think to throw dust in his eyes with such mawkish sentimentalism--to +evade this old tacit obligation by a flimsy pretence of moral scruple? +Craig spoke: + +"And--the Corporation. What did it say? Eh?" + +"The president of the board came to see me. He was good enough to ask +me to reconsider. But I had made my choice." + +Craig leaned forward, his arm on the little inlaid desk beside him. +"Let me finish," he said with deliberate meaning. "The board, +accepting that decision with the keenest regret, desired to make your +retirement the occasion for showing in a tangible way its appreciation +of your long and faithful service. A seat on the Supreme Bench being +vacant, the Directorate proposed, unless your taste pointed otherwise, +to use such influence as it might possess, to gain for your name the +consideration in that connection which it deserved." + +A look of surprise had crossed the Judge's face as he began. A +sensitive flush swept it as he ended. "If you imply that my seat was +offered me, Mr. Craig, even tentatively, at that time, or in that +connection, you are in error!" + +Craig's sneer was open now. There was no more pretence. "If not in so +many words, in effect! Pshaw! Do you mean to pretend you would have +had that appointment if the Trust hadn't backed you for it? It owned +the state bag and baggage then, as it does now--and as it will continue +to do! It put you on the Bench and it has kept you there, and you know +it!" + +The Judge was on his feet now, his flush faded to pallor. He deigned +no answer to the flung assertion. "What is your object in coming to me +to say this?" His voice was deep and resonant. + +"Just this!" Craig lifted his arm, his big fist clenched, his eyes +narrowed. "You were the Trust's counsel and confident for twenty +years--till it put you where you are now! Do you think it did that for +nothing? It _made_ you, Beverly Allen! And now it has reason to +believe that you intend to knife it in the back--to drag the ermine it +put on your shoulders into an incendiary hue-and-cry started by +demagogues who aim to destroy a great industry!" + +"What do you mean, sir?" The Judge's tone was icy. + +"I mean the Welles-Scott decision!" Craig said in a low, deadly voice. +"That"--his clenched hand smote the light desk at his elbow with a +savage blow--"must be _ours_!" + +For an instant there was blank silence. The Judge stood aghast, his +very speech frozen with indignation. To him his judicial calling had +an element that was almost sacred. This man--to whom he had given the +hand of friendship, who had the _entree_ into the exclusive circles of +southern gentility--this man assumed to lay coarse fingers upon his +vestment of office, to question his integrity as a Judge! He dared to +believe him, Beverly Allen, cheaply venal--a puppet, whose legal +rulings were at the beck and call of corporate influence! The room +seemed suddenly stifling hot. He turned to the window, flung the +curtains wide and drew a gulping breath of the fresh air. + +He had not seen Craig's sudden start. For at the smashing blow of his +fist on the fragile Italian desk, a curious thing had happened. Its +catch loosened by the jar, a tiny carven panel had fallen with a little +click, and a thin sheaf of yellowed letters had dropped and spread +fan-wise beside his hand. The backs of the envelopes were uppermost, +and across the top one was written in a dim, twirly hand and faded ink, +the initials _B.A._ + +A thought darted like cold lightning through Craig's brain. +"B.A."--Beverly Allen! Whose were those old letters? The initials +were in a woman's hand. What if they held a clue to the old story +Treadwell, his attorney, had spoken of? A quick instinct inspired him. +His hand closed over them quickly--went to his breast--as the Judge +turned from the window. + +The latter had regained self-control. He stood erect and tall, his +leonine head thrown back, his eyes shining, and in his face a look the +other had never seen in it before. "You have presumed," he said, "to +say to me what I would not have believed any representative of your +corporation would dare to say. And you have taken advantage of my +hospitality to say it in my own house. I choose now to believe this +message an individual one, springing from a personal and base +initiative rather than from the responsible Directorate which I once +served. 'Once,' I say. For I serve it no longer. I am now a member +of the Judiciary of this commonwealth. Because the corporation +furthered my candidacy, you assume that it 'made' me. Perhaps it did. +But it never owned my conscience or my integrity! Nor does it now, +thank God!" + +As he spoke he had stepped to the wall and pushed a bell. "Nelson," he +said, to the entering butler, "show this gentleman to the door." + +Craig had risen to his feet. He looked at the other an instant with +livid face. Then he went rapidly to the hall and snatched up his hat +and stick. The outer door closed heavily behind him. + + +In his room at the hotel Cameron Craig took the sheaf of letters. +Under the electric-light he drew the folded leaves one by one from +their worn envelopes and spread them open before him. A look of +chagrin crossed his face. No woman had written them; they had been +penned by the Judge himself--he was familiar with the heavy, +characteristic hand-writing. Were they, then, only some old letters to +his wife, perhaps? He was holding one leaf to the light. Suddenly his +eye caught. He made an exclamation. His face lighted with amaze and +savage exultation. + +What a weapon blind luck, ironic fate, had put into his hands, in the +very face of the man for whom he had craved it! For on that leaf, +etched in remorseless ink, was what would open an old grave, drag into +the daylight the corpse of an ignoble passion, cast scorn upon the +writer's name and blight and wither present and future! How little, +after all, the tricks of the body changed! Twenty years--and yet, _his +letter_! + +What matter when it had been penned, or whether the woman were long +dead to whom he had once written that blazing indiscretion? He, the +jurist of spotless living and good repute--to be shown forth to the +world as a moral fraud, a husband and father who had once stood +shamelessly ready to fling home and reputation on the scrap-heap in a +disgraceful flight "without benefit of clergy!" The woman presumably +had scorned his offer--since she had sent him back his letters--and yet +on the page still stood the black intention, in black and white! What +incredible folly had led him to preserve it? Twenty years ago--in the +dead past--and yet there it was, to be used in the living present, the +blunt handwriting, recognisable at a glance, damning and beyond denial! + +He laughed aloud. It was Echo's father whom he held in his hand! If +he did not come to terms, so much the better, since the blow would +strike her too. She thought herself above him, did she? What if this +story should be spread abroad in yellow headlines, babbled of in club +and boudoir, smirked at on street-corners? Would she hold herself so +high then? Well, if he was so far beneath her pride, that should bring +her to his level! He felt no prick of shame at the base move he +contemplated, no smart of pity for the ruin it should bring. Ambition +in which was no tincture of honourable scruple wove, with the desire to +humble the woman who would have none of him, to a resolution as +unyielding as steel. + +He gathered up the letters and put them carefully into his pocket. In +another hour he was on the train, speeding to his home in the next +state. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +A HOSTAGE TO THE BOTTLE + +The speech of the day before of which Treadwell had spoken so +enthusiastically to Cameron Craig, had indeed given to the crowd, which +had been wont on past occasions to gather at the old court-house when +he spoke, another revelation of Harry Sevier. It had been +impromptu--not the outgrowth of deliberate plan. The non-appearance of +a much-heralded speaker had thrust the exigency upon him without +warning, and he had acquiesced only in a keen desire to save from blank +failure a meeting in whose principles and object he was by his very +character deeply interested. The tortuous involutions of local +politics had never interested him, but he had thrilled to the stirring +beneath the surface of the great forces of good and evil and the +present agitation for clean government had found him enrolled, without +question, on its side. + +As he stepped forward to face the great curtain of faces that stretched +outward and upward beyond the footlights, he had not known what he +should say. Indeed, while he slowly "felt" his audience in his opening +sentences, the sub-conscious part of his mind had been full of a matter +foreign to the subject at hand. There had come to him a fleeting +recollection of the last time he had spoken in public--the day upon +which he had betrayed his client and put a man, of whose innocence an +instinct deeper-rooted than reason had convinced him, into the striped +habiliments of the convict. The sharp, aching compunction of that +thought had never left him. Since that day, though he went daily to +his sumptuous office, he had taken no new case. He had gone always +with that sin clanking against his conscience and the memory of the +trial had focused always in that glimpse, across the mass of faces, of +a woman's look of puzzle and hurt. During the months since then that +face had hung before his fevered vision as a far, cool oasis to the +desert wayfarer. These had been black months of fierce, untiring +battle with the appetite to which he had surrendered himself, and which +he had sworn to conquer. There had been times when the avid thirst had +seized him by the throat, when endurance had almost failed: days when +he had sat in his inner office, with door locked and blinds down, +fighting desperately with the strenuous impulse that seemed to be +dragging him bodily, as if with fleshly hands, to the little +wall-cabinet whose door had never been unlocked since the day of that +sinister court-recess. + +During this prolonged, grappling struggle he had never been to +Midfields. He had seen Echo but occasionally, walking or driving on +the street, or less frequently at functions from which he could not +absent himself without remark. There had been no confidences between +them. Never had he leaned to her to whisper: "You see! Do I do well?" +Never had her lips said, "I know ... I know, and I am watching!" yet +his heart had told him that she was alive to the issue, that she felt +the forces conflicting for the mastery. She had not been in the +audience on this day, but as the faces pulsed and receded till they +wove into a grey blur in the misty blaze of the incandescents, Harry's +inner vision had a swift memory of her face as it had looked in that +old court-house scene. + +And with it, as though it had been a key to the disused mental +machinery, strangely and wonderfully there had come back to him, in a +sudden flashing illumination like summer lightning, a surging return of +the old power, the vivid rush of lambent images in his brain and the +burning, insistent phrase to his tongue--the power that he had thought +gone forever with that shuddering failure of a year before. + +As he felt again the old native ability rising in him, strong and +undismayed, and once more his own, without hostage given to the bottle, +a stinging delight had swept through him. It was the fruit of victory, +and fiercely sweet in proportion to the bitterness of the struggle. +Yet in his new sensitiveness the realisation had held a flicker of +self-shame. Never in those old days had he employed that talent for +the greater good: only for individual ambition, often for the blunt +defeating of the clear ends of justice! It was another Harry Sevier +who spoke now, one to whom conscience now stood as mentor, to whom +principle was become a guiding star. The leashed power and restraint +had been bred of that long struggle, and from the fresh mastery of self +which he had so hardly gained, flowed forth a subtle magnetic quality +that held his listeners mute. In the hush that wrapped the great +assemblage the speaker of the day, late by an hour, had entered the +back of the stage, to wave back the nonplussed chairman and to seat +himself in the rear, enthralled by the white magic that swayed all +alike. The speech had held no rodomontade, none of the pyrotechnics +that, had lent a flavour of sensation to past court trials. It had +been on a higher plane than appeal to superficial feeling or ingrained +prejudice. It had brought no accusation, pointed no finger, save +backward to old ideals of community respect, and forward to the wave of +independent thought that was sweeping over sister states to break in +thundering force upon the crags of misrule. + +It had closed in a note of hope and of promise, and ended with the hall +hushed in that greatest tribute to true oratory--absolute silence. + +Next day, wherever men congregated in the little capital, Harry +Sevier's name was on every lip. It was flung wide, too, in newspaper +headlines until the ripple stirred far borders. Of this he himself +could not be unaware. He knew that never in the old days had he spoken +as he had spoken then. He was conscious also that in the trial of +himself his faculties had been reorganised and renewed, had emerged +sounder and truer from the strenuous testing, and that the fire through +which he had passed had burned away the rubble and left metal that was +more worthy. Nor could he fail to realise that at a single step he had +attained to a new and unfamiliar status in the community. He felt this +not so much in the multiple congratulations of the many, as in a +certain new deference that he distinguished in more reserved greetings. + +Beneath all, however, but one opinion profoundly concerned him--Echo's. +As he swung along the street this afternoon, the thought of her +excluded all others. + +Rounding the corner, a voice came to him--a ribald, good-humoured +voice, inviting some one to "come and have a drink." He turned +abruptly. Chisholm Allen stood a little way from him, before a +swing-door through which sifted the clink of glasses and boisterous +conversation. + +Chilly was decidedly the worse for wear. Much water had run under the +bridges since he had tussled with old Nelson, the butler, over the +decanter of sherry. His face was pallid and the marks of incorrigible +weakness and self-indulgence showed clearly through its habitual +good-nature. Chilly's feet were set in the paths of dalliance and he +had ceased to care if anybody knew it. He greeted the newcomer, +however, with a trace of embarrassment which he dissipated with a +laugh, as he said: + +"The invitation's for you, if you like, Harry. We'll have one to the +silver-tongued orator! What do you say?" + +For answer Harry linked an arm in his and turned him down the +street--away from the swing-door. "Come up to my rooms, Chilly, it's +cool there and we haven't had a talk for a blue moon. No, we'll +consider the drink afterward." + +Just at the moment a carriage and pair bowled by them. It was drawn by +the Allens' bays and Echo was on the rear seat. She had seen the +action, had caught its import, and Harry had a flashing glance from her +dark eyes that sent the blood coursing to his fingers. Chilly too, +however, had seen the swift exchange. He frowned, then laughed again. + +"You should join the Salvation Army," he said, satirically. "They've a +rescue corps, I believe. I know a pretty ensign, and she shall come +and pin a nice little medal on your manly chest!" + +Harry smiled without resentment. "The Army might not be so bad; it's +an outdoor life at any rate. You'd be better for more of that." + +"I believe you," said Chilly lugubriously. "It's getting impossible +indoors. Nothing doing but moral lectures nowadays. If it weren't for +the Duchess I'd cut it." + +"For 'somewhere east of Suez, where a man can raise a thirst'?" quoted +the other mildly. "Travel is expensive, Chilly." + +"Yes, confound it," was the reply. "So is the thirst. The old man +only allows me fifty dollars a month and I've stuck up every bar in +town to the limit." + +A frown was on Harry's brow. A year ago this youth had confined his +daily potations to the club, and his drinking-bouts to that sequestered +resort, "The Springs." Now he drank openly in corner saloons--he, the +son of a southern gentleman, a member of the Supreme Bench, whose +forebears had been courtly and clean-living from the days of the +Colony! They had turned into the apartment-building now, and a moment +later were in Harry's sitting-room, whose windows opened upon a square +musical with lisping leaves and the cool splash of a fountain. + +It was an apartment that bespoke a keen though sober artistic taste: +grey walls with violet silk curtains at the deep windows and two or +three old paintings--among these, set on an easel, a Greuze that he had +unearthed in a cobwebbed curio-shop in Italy--a plain desk with a strip +of dull-coloured damask whose quaint Russian needle-work set off a few +books in tooled leather--a square piano of Circassian walnut spread +with an old brocade, against which a bowl of peonies splashed their +fleshy crimson--and deep, comfortable chairs. Into one of these Chilly +threw himself. + +"Well," he said, "here we are, as per schedule. So trot out your +drink." + +"It was that I wanted to talk to you about. I think you know I'm your +friend, Chilly, and what I say I say as a friend. Whisky is getting +the better of you." + +"Pshaw!" scoffed Chilly, easily. "You weren't always so mighty +particular. When did you climb onto the water-wagon, I'd like to know?" + +"When I found I was better off there. I haven't touched liquor for a +year. Take my advice, Chilly--it's sound!--and try to cut the drink +out. It's doing you harm." + +Chilly laughed. "That seems to be the signal all along the line!" he +said humorously. "But what's the good? I could knock off any time I +chose, just as well as you. But I don't intend to do it yet awhile. I +like it." + +There was a tentative knock at the door. It opened and a girl's +piquant face peered in. "Chisholm Allen!" said Nancy Langham's +indignant voice. "Have you forgotten you have an engagement to take me +to the kennels this afternoon?" + +Chilly sprang forward and seized her small gloved hands. "Come in," he +said. "There's nobody here but Harry and me. Please do, Nancy." + +"Oh, I mustn't!" She turned to the latter. "You see I needed Chilly +so _tremendously_, and Echo told me she saw him with you. I expected +to meet him on the way. Then I thought I'd just ring and ask for him, +only the hall door was open. Chilly, you're outrageously undependable. +You know I wanted to get that dog to-day, because I'm going to leave +for home to-morrow, and you do know more about dogs than any one else." + +Chilly looked a little shame-faced. "I forgot all about it, Nancy. +Honestly, I did." + +She sighed. "That's the fact, no doubt, but it's not one bit +complimentary. You're so dreadfully truthful, Chilly! Come along now, +or we'll be too late." + +"All right," he answered, drawing her inside the door. "Just a minute. +Harry's going to give me a drink. Weren't you, Harry, eh?" + +For answer the other pressed a button and a trim silk-robed Japanese +came noiselessly from the next room. "Fetch a bottle of Evien, +Suzuki," he said, "and some glasses. Have it cold, please." + +Chilly stared. "Mineral water!" he exclaimed with sulky discomfiture. +"My word! This is no signal for the H2O. I'm _dry_!" + +Harry shook his head. "I'm sorry, but it's a rule of my house." + +Chilly shrugged. For an instant a little sneer drew down his lips, +irritation fighting with his seldom-failing good-humour. He turned to +the square piano, sat down on its stool, and ran his fingers up and +down the ivory keys. + +"I'll return good for evil," he said. "Before we go I'll give you a +little ballad I've just composed. It's bound to make a great hit when +it strikes the Barbary Coast. He struck a resounding chord, and with a +wink at Harry, began to sing: + + "The rounder swore at his barroom score + 'Ere he called for a last, long bottle, + And proceeded to tint, without any stint, + His nose with a mellow mottle. + Then he climbed on a chair and hiccoughed long + And loudly he sang this funny old song: + + "'Money is dross, + Loving is loss, + There's never a crown that is worth its cross! + Life is a toss, + Dying is moss, + But booze--Oh, bully old booze, is boss!'" + + +There was something of whimsical fun, yet of bitter recklessness in the +spectacle. Without technical training, Chilly had music in his +finger-tips and a fair baritone voice. The fingers wavered now and +then and the voice was shaken a little, but it was full of magnetism, +as, swaying lightly on the stool, he rolled out the slangy doggerel +with all the unction of a music-hall artist: + + "Then the mixer laughed till the cat went daft + And the roof clanged all its gutters, + While the loungers yelled with mirth unquelled + Till they shook the very shutters; + And a sweet-faced devil peeped over the steins + And merrily carolled the lilting lines: + + "'Money is dross, + Loving is loss, + There's never a crown that is worth its cross. + Life is a toss, + Dying is moss, + But booze--Oh, bully old booze, is boss!" + + +Harry's nerves were on edge. It was not the cheap vulgarity of the +jingle nor the patent swagger of the performer, but the +under-suggestion of the picture. The edge of this qualm had touched +him on the street, with the odour of Chilly's breath and the moist tang +of hops that had floated through the swinging-door. Now he felt a +sudden anger that the coarse picturing and the tinkling keys had power +to call up, even for an instant, the old slinking, craving ache in his +throat. + +Chilly swung round and got up laughing. "Pretty good, eh, what?" he +said. "Come along, Nancy; we'll go and pick out that dog! So long, +Harry." + +Harry opened the door for them. He did not trust himself to speak. As +Nancy's hand lay an instant in his on the threshold, a wave of sudden +pity engulfed him. Her cheeks were mist-pale and her girlish lips were +trembling. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +THE HEART OF A MAN + +An hour later Harry sat in the same pleasant room, looking out where +curdled clouds set their silver sails in the pale shimmer of sky. A +light breeze fluttered the figured-silk curtains, a blue-bottle buzzed +tentatively to and fro outside, and birds were fluting in the trees of +the small park and splashing joyously in the fountain. + +The encounter with Chilly had broken into his mood, which had been +occupied with more inviting things. Now, alone, the thought of what +this day held for him absorbed him. "One year!" he had said to himself +on the day of that old court-house trial. "That is the test I will +give myself. It is enough. If I can beat the brandy for a year, I can +beat it forever!" To-day was an anniversary; this afternoon the year +was up. The period had called up all his courage, had searched out +with prying fingers every crevice of weakness, explored insistently +each avenue of uncontrol. But he had won the long battle, and the +resurgence of the old power that had come to him in his yesterday's +speech had crowned the victory with confidence. Yesterday he would +have died sooner than to have wrung from his lips what he should say to +her--to Echo--to-day! + +When the tall old clock in the corner next chimed he rose and called, +"Suzuki!" + +The Japanese servant of spotless raiment entered with noiseless +footsteps. + +"Tell Aunt Judy I sha'n't want dinner to-night," said Sevier; "I'll +dine at the club. You can take the night off, if you like; I'll let +myself in." + +"_Hai-e!_" Suzuki sucked in his breath and his oval eyes allowed +themselves a gleam of satisfaction. As he brought his master's hat and +stick Harry looked at him meditatively, wondering, as he had wondered a +thousand times, what lay behind that secret-keeping, brown face with +its perpetual, half-smiling gravity. He had picked him up a half-dozen +years before in his travels, a shabby and abject adventurer with an +English dialect that was fearfully and wonderfully made; and the +youthful flotsam had speedily and without apparent tuition blossomed +forth into that inestimable jewel, a perfect valet. With Aunt Judy the +cook, who had been a servant of his father's, Bob the chauffeur who was +her son, and Suzuki, Harry's bachelor _menage_ in the city stood a +model of its kind, and the despair of his associates. + +Harry walked slowly along the street clanging with cars, on pavements +busy and sunny at first and giving place gradually to wedges of lawn +and stretches of deserted foliaged flagging as he approached the +suburbs. At the big gate of Midfields he lifted his eyes. Mrs. Allen +was just stepping from her electric at the curb, cool and statuesque +and smiling. + +"A penny for your thoughts!" she said. "I really believe you were +counting the flag-stones. I hope you were coming in--you've been +shamefully oblivious of our pleasure this season!" + +"I've been oblivious of my own," he countered, opening the gate for +her. "But I'm going to make amends in future." + +They walked leisurely up the drive under the acacias, chatting. She +had often wondered, in the old days, whether there were not some +understanding between him and Echo, and his long absence had puzzled +her. But he had apparently gone nowhere else, and she welcomed his +return. He was a distinctly eligible _parti_, and Echo had reached a +point where the future was a pertinent thing. There had never been +between the mother and daughter that close _rapport_ which existed +between daughter and father; Mrs. Allen had never felt that she +understood Echo. She had never known for her, even as a child, the +fierce and excluding yearning which she had lavished on Chisholm, and +which had grown even stronger with the latter's increasing years and +delinquencies. But she had Echo's interests thoroughly at heart, and +Harry Sevier--particularly since his speech at the Opera House--had +attained to importance in her worldly estimation. + +"I haven't congratulated you," she said presently. "Your speech! It +was a masterly thing." + +"You were there? I'm glad I didn't know it. It would have deepened +the blueness of my funk." + +"Flatterer!" She tapped him on the arm with her parasol. "But I'm not +wholly pleased, I assure you. The headlines are prophetic, I'm afraid. +Presently the politicians will seize upon you, and the first we know +you will be in Congress--or the Senate--and the town will have lost +you. That's the way it goes!" + +"Ah," he said, shaking his head, "who is the flatterer now?" + +They had reached the big porch and she drew him into the hall and to +the blue parlour, where the Judge sat with Echo, leisurely munching +toast. "I've brought Mr. Sevier," she announced, "with his laurels +thick upon him, just in time for tea. For my part, I am a wreck from +the sun and I shall take mine in my room. But you'll come soon again, +won't you?" + +She passed out, faintly smiling and leaving a perfume of heliotrope +behind her, without waiting Harry's answer, which seemed indeed to be +given to Echo, since his hand held hers at the moment and his eyes were +on her face. The sight for him had blotted everything else. The +restful room with its cool shadows, the Judge--all seemed to retire +into an inextinguishable and meaningless background, leaving only them +two, together. In the year past he had never been so near her; now he +marked that while her hair had the same familiar whorl and golden +under-lights, her face seemed more serious than of old, her eyes deeper +and more wistful. + +Since that far-away evening at the Country Club, Echo had passed +through a confusion of experiences, the more trying as they had been +locked in her own breast. It had been more than Harry Sevier: it was +her love for him that had been fought over during that long year. When +he had left her that night with his kiss burning on her hand, she had +known instinctively that he had gone to do battle. What she had said +had stung him deeply, yet she could not have recalled a word. It had +been the cry of wounded pride, of stricken ideals, of reproach, of +protest against the dominancy of the thing she hated over the man she +loved. As the long months of autumn and winter wore away she had +seemed, with a singular clarity of vision, to see his temptation and to +enter spiritually into his struggle. They had met only a few times and +then in public places and more than once her eye had distinguished the +traces of the conflict. Something deep in her had told her that when +he came to her again that conflict would be ended. So, at sight of him +on the threshold, Echo's heart had leaped into turbulent beating. +Here, at last, they were face to face--it was the closure of the past, +the burgeoning of the new! + +There was a desultory conversation over the tea, and then the Judge +went back to his chair in the library, and they two strayed out through +the open French-window to the wide porch. There, on the top step, she +sat down, leaning back against one of the big columns, up which a +crimson rambler climbed. He sat lower, at her feet. The smile had +faded from both their faces, and a rose that was on her breast, from +the tumult of her heart, showered its petals on the stone. He could +see the old sun-dial gleaming from its tangle of ivy. He knew its +quaint motto: + + _Hours fly, flowers die. + New men, new ways, + Pass by; + Love stays._ + +After a silence he lifted his gaze. + +"You didn't think," he said in a low voice, "that I stayed away because +I--because that same thing had ever happened since the day of the +trial?" + +"No," she answered, gently, "I knew it hadn't." + +A uniformed imp on a bicycle--a postal messenger--careened wildly up +the drive with a special delivery letter. They saw him deliver it to +old Nelson at the side portico and pedal whistling down a by-path. + +"Then," he said quickly, "you know now that it never can again? It has +been a year, a round year to-day. I made up my mind that I would not +come to you till the last day was out." + +"I felt that, too," she said. "I knew what you were thinking. I--I +even guessed the year. Was it--so hard?" + +"Yes," he answered. "But it would have been harder if I hadn't found +it out when I did. The sting of all these months," he went on, "has +been your thought of me! Every day, every hour, I have seen you as you +looked that night at the 'Farm.' I shall never deserve that look +again--Echo!" + +She turned toward him at that, as if with a sudden impulse, her eyes +like sapphire stars, her lips parted, but she did not speak. The +failing sunlight spattered down through the moving foliage in +green-gilt flashes that tinged her face and touched her hair with the +soft burnish of Venetian gold, like that of a figure he remembered in +St. Mark's. Behind her reared the seamed and grey old column--a faded +background of age for a figure of immortal youth--and he knew suddenly +that the picture of her, as he saw her at that moment, had covered +forever the painful memory. There was only the ardent, unconditional +now: only Echo and the dear old porch and the dimming daylight--and a +bluebird singing from the heart of a tree--ever henceforward to be +symbols to him of woman's love and--home! + +He leaned toward her, his hand groping for hers, outstretched on the +cool stone beside her, and said in a voice shaken, in spite of himself: + +"Echo--it _is_ just as it was a year ago, isn't it?" + +She caught her hand--the one he groped for--to her cheek. She rose, +and for an instant it seemed as if she had not heard. Then her glance +wavered and fell and a bright, rich colour stained her cheeks like a +sudden flush of rosy sun-set. But she had slightly turned away and he +did not see it. + +"Ah!" he said, looking up at her. "I may say it now--may I not?--what +you must have known all along. I love you, I love you! Only you and +your love, dear--that is all I ask of God!... Echo--" + +There was a sudden sound behind them, a hoarse cry from the room they +had left. Both turned sharply toward the French-window. Then she was +down the long porch like a flying shadow. + +He followed, to find her bending over the form of her father, slipped +sideways on the leathern sofa, his face bluish-white and a paper +crumpled in his rigid hand. At the same moment Nelson thrust his +woolly head through the rear door. + +"Quick!" she cried, kneeling beside the couch. "He has fainted. Call +mother." He went, his aged features twitching with fright. + +"I will send Doctor Southall," said Harry quickly. He touched her +hand, and with a single backward look at her, hurried out. She heard +his step speeding down the gravel drive. + +Echo laid a tremulous hand upon her father's, and at the touch the +tense fingers relaxed and a crumpled brown paper dropped from them. +She snatched it up--was that what had made him faint? She spread it +out: it was a photographic print, unmounted, of the last page of a +letter, in his own handwriting. Across the top was printed, in the +purple, noncommittal lettering of a typewriter, "For possible release +May 3rd." + +Then as she gazed, over the agitation of her face grew a shocked +bewilderment that rushed headlong to realisation. She started to her +feet, and a vivid scarlet flooded her pale face from chin to brow, then +slowly ebbed, leaving behind it a frozen anguish. The print fell from +her hand. At the same moment the Judge stirred and opened his eyes. +He saw her standing before him; knowledge slipped back. + +"Echo--" + +She turned swiftly. He had struggled to a sitting posture--his gaze +fastened on the crumpled paper on the rug. A little spasm crossed his +face. "Reach me that," he said. + +She picked it up and laid it in his hand, and he put it into his pocket +with shaking fingers. He passed his hand across his forehead. +"Where's Sevier?" he asked dully. + +"He went to send the doctor. We were on the porch and heard you cry +out." + +"Ah, yes, I--remember. I tried to call you. I lost track of things +for a minute or two, I reckon, But it's nothing. I've had little +spells like this before. I don't need Southall--send Nelson to tell +him not to come. I'm all right." + +Unheeding her protests, he rose and went to his chair, as Mrs. Allen, +with unaccustomed agitation on her face, swept into the room. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +THE HANDWRITING ON THE WALL + +Late that night the Judge sat alone at his desk in the library. There +was a faint pungent odour in the room and at his elbow sat an ash-tray +on which was a little huddle of brown ashes--all that remained of the +photograph whose arrival that afternoon had so disconcerted him. He +sat like a stone image, staring out into the moon-lighted garden, but +really seeing nothing beyond the range of the poisonous ashes at his +side, save a green-and-yellow blur that might have been blent of leaves +and moonshine. + +He was looking at the Handwriting on the Wall. + +All of his early life had been impeccable, all save that single +lapse--that "brain-storm" which had convulsed the deep and quiet waters +of his nature. It had come and gone with fateful swiftness, and out of +the bitterness of the tragic awakening had grown gradually--as a +spotless lily springs from the silt--a flower of recompense, which, its +roots in the turbid memory, had shed a subtle perfume on his later +life. His steady-going career had been laurelled with place and +honours, and in Echo he had found compensation for the empty and the +missed. And now, after all the years, Fate grinned at him like a +gargoyle from the cloud, holding the thunderbolt to destroy him! +Unless he paid the penalty--with his professional integrity! + +The Judge knew all at once that in the Great Economy no act of life was +lost. His had not been. It had only been covered. Somewhere that old +leaf of scribbled paper had lain, inert but potential, waiting the turn +of the wheel to bring it to light. By some satanic twist of +circumstance it had come to the hands of his enemy--Craig was his enemy +now--and in his hands it spelled his own ruin. What weapon was there +to fight with? None. However dastard the act that spread it to the +world, he would stand in the eyes of his fellow-men discredited, +undermined, morally disestablished, stripped and naked of all those +things which were the breath of his life. He thought of his wife--of +Echo. For them humiliation, looks askance. His decision on the +Welles-Scott case was ready, locked in his drawer--lacking only his +signature writ at the bottom--the most vital and far-reaching decision +of any he had rendered. On the first of May it was to be handed down. +He remembered the typewritten line on the photograph: "May 3rd!" On +that day he would be placarded in the public prints! + +A hackneyed text flashed through his mind: "Be sure thy sin will find +thee out." He had not sinned, as the world counted it, no. But +chasing the first, a second text etched itself as swiftly: "As a man +thinketh in his heart, so is he." + +The coils had woven inextricably, there was no gap in the meshes. +Suppose he did this thing that Craig demanded, rewrote the decision, +perjured himself. Right, by another judgment, would have its way in +the end. The act would save him from shame--would save others as well. +What did it matter? Would not such a solution be best for all +concerned? + +"Thou shalt not do evil that good may come!"--it was curious how the +banal, forgotten texts started up, like Jack-in-boxes, from some +boyhood covert of his brain! Not matter? Ah, how much it mattered! +Escape by that road was impossible for him. And there was but one +other road by which he could evade the issue. + +He unlocked a desk-drawer and pushed aside its litter of papers. A +small silver-mounted revolver lay there--pointing the one way out. He +picked it up, his fingers shrinking at the chill of the cool metal, +then laid it on the desk. He took a sheet of paper from its place and +began to write: "Dear Echo--" + +He started; no, that would not do. He began again: "Dear Charlotte +and--" + +He paused an instant and listened--his hearing had caught some sound +above-stairs. It was not repeated and he bent his head again over the +writing. But his fingers would not frame the words. He laid aside the +pen. Better, after all, to go all silently, leaving behind him empty +speculation, which if painful at first, would become in time but a +softened memory! + +It was the opening of the door of Echo's room which he had heard. For +hours she had lain sleepless, her brain throbbing, strange painful +pictures flitting under her closed eyelids. Her home world, which had +always seemed simple and uncomplex, even in its darker aspects, had +suddenly become fateful and mysterious, a thing of secret depths and +shaming, piteous revelations. Her own father's past had held a secret +that would not bear the light! That he had loved another woman than +her mother--afterward--that, though the thought was repellent, perhaps +he could not have helped. But that he had ever, ever as a passing +phase, yielded to an infatuation which had taken no thought of +consequence or of convention smote her with a kind of terror. Now, +through his own reckless act, he had become the prey of a shameless +woman--of a blackmailer. + +For that was what it seemed to her. It did not occur to her that his +letter might have fallen into other hands. In her imagination, back of +the situation stood the woman who had tempted him, almost to his +complete undoing, in his youth, now--a very wanton!--holding out the +badge of his indiscretion, for a price! The photograph had come to him +with its blunt threat typed at the top: "For Possible Release May 3rd." +Echo had seen the like many a time written upon her father's +printer's-proofs. It meant released for publication. His letter was +to be spread broadcast--unless he met the demand! The hideous +vulgarity of his predicament sent pulsing waves of shame and +humiliation over her. It seemed suddenly that their conventional, +well-ordered existence had dropped all at once into an unnatural and +hateful environment, the murky, unredeemable atmosphere of the +yellow-backed novel and the tawdry film-play. Thoughts such as these +had fought with the acute sympathy that had all her life made her and +her father in feeling wellnigh inseparable, stabbing her love with the +reflection that his deepest heart had, after all, been locked from her. + +Gradually, however, the sharper corrosive ache had dulled away, leaving +an overmastering sense of his trouble. Since Nelson had helped him to +his room after his fainting in the library, she had not seen him, for +though he had with curious stubbornness, it had seemed to her, refused +to have the doctor come, he had not appeared at dinner. She wondered +whether he was now asleep, or lying wide-eyed, nursing thoughts like +hers. Finally there had stolen over her an odd uneasiness, a thriving +anxiety. That tenuous telegraphy whose laws evade analysis though its +operations are familiar and which, ever since her childhood, had called +from her a subconscious and involuntary response to his moods that had +sometimes startled them both by its eerie suggestion, now flooded her +mind with a sense of warning. She slipped out of bed to peer through +the blind. She could see a window of the library: light was sifting +from between its heavy curtains--her father was not in his room, then; +he was there. She thrust her feet into worsted slippers, threw a +kimono over her nightgown and ran quickly down the stair. + +The light footfall, the whispering rustle, did not reach the Judge. He +was unaware of the girl who had paused uncertainly on the threshold. +His mind was arguing the final phase of his problem. + +What he purposed would cut the Gordian knot, make plain-sailing for +others, if not for himself. He would have rendered no decision on the +crucial case. With his escape the problem would solve itself. Craig +would have nothing to gain then in publishing the letter. "Why not?" +he muttered. "It is justifiable--it is neither gross nor cowardly--to +issue one's-self a ticket into the hereafter in order to avert shame +from the innocent and secure peace to those one loves!" His wife was +provided for. His elimination from her equation of life, he reflected +with a tinge of bitterness, would not deeply disturb her even, centred +existence. Echo, he thought likely, would marry Sevier. And +Chilly--of what earthly use was his life to Chilly? "I will do it," he +said to himself. He stretched out his hand--toward the silver-mounted +revolver. + +But he drew it back. A further clearer conception had come to him in +that last instant to give him pause. What, after all, was he about to +do? Himself aside, all that was dearest to him aside, was not the act +he contemplated at bottom the murder of a principle, the betrayal of a +trust that he held for the State? He was a public officer, who had +taken oath in the presence of his associates worthily to execute the +functions of his high office, to do justice and fear not. For him the +sin of omission could be no less than the sin of commission. Would +such a shifty suppression of his decision be one whit less a treason +than the rendering of a mendacious one? Either equally besmirched his +honour! Something deeper in him than dread of death, deeper even than +his present fear of life, stirred and throbbed. No, whatever the +outcome, no matter what it held for him and his, he must go through +with it to the bitter end! He buried his face in his hands. + +As he sat thus stirless, the sense came to him of another presence in +the room. Another's breath seemed to enwrap the place with feeling. +He turned his head and saw the figure in the doorway. "Echo!" he cried +and rose to his feet. + +[Illustration: He turned his head and saw the figure in the doorway. +"Echo!" he cried, and rose to his feet] + +She came to him quickly, a little diffidently. "I couldn't help it, +dear! I felt you--worrying, and I had to come." Suddenly her eyes +fell on the revolver on the desk. She sprang and snatched at it in +panic. "That! Oh, not that! Not that!" + +"I--it was in my drawer," he said. "Surely you--" + +"Ah," she cried. "I know! You--you received a letter this afternoon. +It made you faint. You haven't been yourself since you read it. And +now you--" + +He drew a shaking hand across his eyes. "No, dear," he said more +steadily. "It would not have been--what you think. There was a moment +when--but it has gone, and forever." He took the revolver from her +hand, returned it to the drawer and locked it. "There," he said, "I +give you the key. It will not happen now." There was in his wailing +speech a kind of hopeless acquiescence and finality. + +Her heart was beating hard with a painful embarrassment. "Can +you--can't you tell me what the letter was?" + +He looked at her palely, his features working. She would have to know +soon enough, yet he shrank with a fastidious pain from telling her. +What would she think of him? "Twenty years ago," he said, "when I was +a young man, I wrote an--an unwise letter. It--it had to do with some +one who died the year it was written, but whose memory I--I treasure. +The threat is made now to publish it, and this would--would shame and +harm that memory and me." + +"Some one who is dead?" she repeated bewildered. The picture her fancy +had painted was fading out. "Then how--" + +"The old letter has fallen into unfriendly hands." + +"And it must come back to hurt you--to spoil your life now! Something +written before I was born! It sha'n't! It sha'n't!" She spoke with +passionate abandon, her words struck out like fire from flint, from the +horror of the knowledge that had sprung to her at sight of the gleaming +thing at which she had snatched. "But you can pay the price, no matter +how much it is! Take my pearls--my rings--my gowns." + +He shook his head. "It's not money: what I am asked to pay is my +honour. I am required to alter my judicial decision on the +Welles-Scott case ... to hand down a legal lie." + +She looked at him with parted lips. "The Welles-Scott case!" + +"Yes. Much hangs on this decision. The great corporate interests--but +you would not understand." + +She threw herself beside his chair and knelt close to him. A great +compassion was welling up in her, mingling itself with deep anger at +the cowardly attack upon him. She had known of such conscienceless +warfare in political life--acts of "character assassins" which knew +neither pity nor honourable scruple. "Who has the letter?" she asked. + +"Cameron Craig. It came with his card." + +She started violently. Cameron Craig! He who had once asked her to +marry him, who had asserted his love for her--he, now bent on her +father's ruin! She had a darting memory of that heavy, ruthless jaw, +those lowering, determined eyes. Cameron Craig? She lifted a stricken +face. + +"You see!" he said. "I remember you once said to me that he was not +'one of us.' He isn't. That is why I know that he will stop at +nothing. He will do what he threatens. There is no way out." + +She rose to her feet. Her heart was beating so that her breath came +with difficulty and a mist was before her eyes. "You will hand down +the decision." It was a statement, not a question. + +"God help me--I must!" + +"When?" + +"A week from to-day, as I have announced." + +She leaned and put her arm about his neck, the key of the drawer still +clenched in her cold hand, and kissed him on the forehead. Even in +that numb moment she felt a certain pride that he, who had known a +passing weakness, was yet, in this crucial moment, so strong. + +"You must go back to bed now," he said, heavily. "You are going to +your aunt's to-morrow, aren't you?" + +She nodded, her cheek still against his. "I shall take the early +train, before you are up. But I shall be back next day." + +She withdrew her arms. "Good night," she half-whispered, then looked +at the locked drawer. "You will not--you will not--" + +"I promise," he said. + +"Whatever happens?" + +"Whatever happens." + +An instant later she was gone. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +THE ONLY WAY + +As Echo stood once more in the dim light of her blue-and-white room, it +seemed to her to belong to some blithe past life which she had lived +long ago and discarded--as if she were suddenly an intruder into the +peace and quiet it enfolded. For though her hands were like ice, her +veins were beating hot and her mind was filled with the heat of a fiery +furnace. + +Cameron Craig held her father's name, his career, his whole happiness, +and that of them all--her mother, Chilly, herself--in his hand. His +was the power to crush and to ban. This man had professed to love her. +She remembered what he had said to her that day in the garden--a year +ago: "Since I met you the whole world has been changing for me.... You +have entered into my blood and my brain, and the want of you has +coloured all I have thought and done ... Echo, Echo!" The words seemed +to wreathe about her, to return to her in pelted reverberations from +the wall. She could save the situation. She could marry Cameron Craig. + +The weird thought had rushed through her like a cold flame with the +voicing of that name in the library. He would do it. More than the +decision, more than any material ambition, he desired her. The +letter--and the photographic plate--should be the price! + +As she fought with herself through the long night hours, distraught yet +tearless, it came to her with agonised reiteration that the resolve +marked the end for her of all that makes life young. Up to a year ago +she had been a girl; her deeper emotions had been unstirred, her soul +unknown to herself. Only from the moment at the "Farm" when she had +sent Harry Sevier from her to his battle with appetite, had she known +the real meaning of life. Since then she had had the sweetness of +learning love's unfolding in denial, and that very day it had come to +fruition. Could it have been only that afternoon that the confession +had trembled on his lips, when her heart had seemed to beat audibly, +like little songs of joy? Now the cup was dashed from her lips. And +he would never know--she could never tell him! That was the deep and +piteous treason to which she must contribute! + +She crept to the window and looked out over the garden, its elfish +vapours dimly lighted by a thin, silver crescent-moon that seemed +hanging like a gipsy ear-ring from a swarthy cloud. Below her the +box-bordered paths showed in a sunken cross. The hemlock in its +centre, with its triple spires, had been brought, a tiny seedling, by +her great-great-grandmother from White Sulphur Springs, rooted in a +gourd tied on the back of an old buff-coloured coach. The old lady's +quaint portrait hung still in the dining-room, just above the +diamond-leaded cabinet that held the tea-set of gold and lapiz lazuli +blue, from which Jefferson and Randolph had drunk, and her garlanded +silver basket whose inscription read, "From a lover of fifty years to +his bride." + +Echo felt a little shiver in her heart, as painful contrasting pictures +thronged before her disordered fancy--pictures of herself as Craig's +wife. She saw herself, young in years but with sere joys and blasted +ideals, all youth's impulses dead in her, the wife of a man whose +bodily presence she loathed and whose character, even before this, she +had detested. A chill passed through her, and she dropped the curtain +and shut out the moonlight. But what if her father stood ruined, the +mark of public pity and covert sneers? She thought of the +pearl-handled revolver. He would have given his life to checkmate +fate, if that had but been possible to him. And she was his daughter! + +But to give _herself_, her body, her soul! To go to this man, to live +with him, to bear his name--she shrank from the thought as at the touch +of white-hot iron. + + +When the tiny ormolu clock on her dressing-table struck five she drew +up the blind. Dawn, with its coral sandals, was tiptoeing over the +garden, hanging dew-diamonds on the rose-bushes, swinging her censer of +multifold perfume to the waking flute of the birds. She bathed her +face and smoothed her hair, then put on a dark travelling dress and +packed a small bag, putting into it only linen and a few +toilet-accessories, with a closed silver frame, heart-shaped, whose +twin sides held miniatures of her father and mother. Last she unlocked +a tin box in her drawer, took some money which it contained and put it +in her pocket. Then, bag in hand, she went downstairs. + +In the dining-room Nelson held up his hands, pink-lined palms outward. + +"Mah Goodness, honey!" he ejaculated. "Reck'n yo' didn' sleep 'tall +las' night, what wid Marse Beve'ly took so yistidy. Yo' look jes' lak +er ghos'. Now yo' set down en drink some hot coffee en eat plenty +chick'n en waffles. Ain' gwine find nuthin' _half_ ez good on dat ar' +dinin'-cyah, nohow!" + +The warmth of the coffee was grateful to her, and while the old man +hovered about her she made a pretence of eating, answering his +protestations with monosyllables, in fact scarcely knowing what she +said, for her mind was busy with other things. 'Lige, the driver, +would wait to put her on the train--she must take the up-train then, as +he expected her to do. And it was an express: she could not leave it +till it reached the junction, hours later. There, however, she could +take the other road--the Southern. There must be an afternoon train, +and that, though by a round-about way, would bring her finally to her +destination. + +When carriage-wheels sounded from the drive she went into the library +and seated at her father's desk, wrote a note. It was to Harry Sevier. +She sealed and addressed it with a hand that shook a little, and gave +it to Nelson with instructions to send it during the morning. The old +negro put her into the carriage, with her bag and tucked the cover +about her with loving hands. + +She caught a breath, uneven like a child's. "You'll--take good care of +father, Nelson?" + +"Bress yo' li'l ha'at, ah'm sho' gwine watch Marse Beve'ly lak er +_hawk_. He'll be all right, en yo' be back termorrer." + +"Yes," she said faintly. + +As the carriage whirled into the roadway, she turned her head to cast a +straining gaze up the silent drive to the old house. Then the acacias +shut it from her view. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +DERELICT + +In Harry Sevier's outer office his clerk glanced backward with a +startled expression, his law-book dropping from his fingers. "That's +queer," he muttered. "I never heard him laugh like that before. +Doesn't sound like a joke, somehow." + +He rose and tapped lightly on the inner door, which he had closed upon +his employer a moment before. But there was no response and he went +back to his seat--and the volume he was studying. "Wonder if it was +that note I gave him," he speculated. + +The tap had fallen on deaf ears. Harry was sitting in the other room, +rigidly staring at the note in question. There was on him a feeling of +actual physical sickness. He did not know that he had laughed. At +last he rose, and crumpling the written sheet into a ball, laid it in +the fire-place and struck a match. His fingers worked clumsily and he +broke several short off before a flame showed and he stooped painfully +and held the match to its edge. He remained in the crouching posture +while the paper blazed merrily up. In the charring heat it crackled +and opened, showing for a brief instant in the baleful, blackening, +light two sentences it had contained: "_Think as gently of me as you +can. I can never marry you--never._" + +He stood up dazedly and groped his way to a chair. So this was the +end! She, Echo, whom he had thought so true, she had been playing with +him--and now the game was over. To her he had been only a puppet, a +card in hand to be played off, discarded for the winning of the greater +point. Poor, brainless, fool that he was! There was no longer a +yesterday--no dear eyes holding his, no Eden wind blowing the +rose-petals nor silver stars swinging the incense of the gods! He had +been living in a fairy-tale, a castle in Spain, a fool's paradise, +hugging a ridiculous dream, that had had no reality to her, had been +but a chapter of coquetry, to which she now wrote _finis_! "Think +gently!" This was the epitaph of her flirtation with Harry +Sevier--flung away, raked under, thrust from sight, a thing for the +scare-crow and the scavenger! + +He got up and going slowly to the window, stood many minutes with his +forehead against the pane. + +What remained for him? To sweep out of his life the shards of that +beautiful thing that lay destroyed forever? To saunter on, with +hypocritical smirk and affected nonchalance, down the empty declivity +of professional habit, to an undesirable goal? To what end? Of what +value had been his striving? A year ago he might have won her--no one +else had had more than a slight hold upon her then. It had been that +long denial that he had set himself that had undone him! What profit +to him that he had won the mastery over himself, had cut the tentacle +coils that were enwinding him? Of what had been the use? + +There darted through his racked mind the sorry jingle that Chilly had +once roared in his rooms: + + "Money is dross, + Loving is loss, + There's never a crown that is worth its cross. + Life is a toss, + Dying is moss, + But booze--Oh, bully old booze, is boss!" + + +Why not "cut it all," as Chilly had longed to do? Plunge out along the +numb, reckless way whose well-remembered mile-stones suddenly beckoned +him--anyhow, anywhere, only to muffle the pain that plucked at him--to +sodden and sink himself in blessed oblivion, like a stone in a pool! + +A thing that had lain torpid and dormant in the dregs of his being +thrust up its head. It was as though a chain snapped in his brain, and +what had been shackled there reared, savage and exultant. On the desk +sat a photograph in a silver frame. Once he had been used to turn this +face-down when that cabinet was opened a year ago! He picked this up +and with a sudden wrench of his powerful fingers bent and broke it +across again and again, crushing metal and board into a shapeless +battered twist, and flung it into the fireplace. He snatched up a +heavy paper-weight and with one blow smashed in the door of the little +wall-cabinet. The glass fell in a shower of silvery tinkles to the +floor. He seized the black bottle that sat there--with the rusty +goblet--poured the latter to the brim and drank it off--once, twice, +three times. + +He went into the main office. Its occupant was on his feet in alarm at +the crash of shattered glass in the next room. "How much money is +there on the premises?" + +The clerk looked in a drawer. "About sixty dollars. It's the last +payment on--" + +"Give it to me," said Sevier shortly. He pocketed the wad of bills the +other handed him. "I'm going on a journey--abroad," he said. "I may +be gone some time--in fact, I know I shall. Don't forward anything, +and close up the office till I return. You will draw, as usual, of +course." In another moment he was giving directions--over the +complaisant wire--to his bank. He had always kept his leisure clear by +putting the small details of daily routine book-keeping, as he +expressed it "on the other fellow"; however long his desertion, rent +and camp-followers should be paid with regularity. + +Ten minutes later his valet, in a suit of spotless white linen, let him +into his apartment. + +"I'm off for a vacation, Suzuki," he said. "To-night, when Bob comes +for orders, tell him to put the car up till I want it. You can go to +night-school and rub up your 'Yingleesh.'" + +The Japanese blinked. "A'right," he said. "When we see you some more?" + +"When I get back." Sevier lifted a book from the table. "Take this to +Mr. Treadwell's--his house, not his office--you understand. There's no +message; it belongs to him. Don't wait; go at once." + +When he had closed the outer door on the valet, Harry drew a long +breath. He opened another door and listened. He could hear Aunt Judy +rattling crockery in the kitchen, humming as she laboured. He would be +undisturbed, the coast was clear. His veins were beating hot now with +the brandy, and the sickness was gone. In the old days the reaction +had been slow and grudging. But during the year his body had refreshed +itself. The inured crust of usage was stripped away, and the physical +side responded speedily. + +He went into his dressing-room and threw open the huge walnut wardrobe +that effaced one wall. It was hung from end to end with clothing. He +selected a cheap dun-coloured suit which he had purchased abroad years +before for a walking-tour, of whose strenuous occupations it showed +some traces in wear, a flannel shirt and a slouch hat, companion of +sundry long-ago fishing excursions. He took a nail-scissors and +painstakingly cut from each article its maker's name. In the +bath-room, first with shears and then with a razor, he cut off his +crisp dark beard: never, since his college days abroad, had he seen his +own face like that. + +Finally arrayed, he regarded himself in the cheval-glass. The Harry +Sevier of sumptuous apparel and perfect grooming, the familiar spirit +of the place, was gone. In his stead there stood an unfamiliar +presence, with smooth-shaven chin and knock-about clothing. And the +stranger looked from the depths of the mirror with a gaze from which +something tempered and remorseful had vanished, a gaze of avid +recklessness and strange, irresponsible daring, the look of one +standing on the sheer verge of any hazard, welcoming any throw of the +dice, fearing nothing and caring nothing. + +As he stood, his hand encountered a small hard object in his pocket. +He drew it out. It was a ring, roughly made and holding an uncut +emerald almost square in shape. He remembered that once, in the woods, +he had bought it for a whim from some gipsy caravan--a luck ring. Much +luck it had brought him! Well, it was the gipsy-road now for him. He +drew off his seal ring and thrust the other on his finger in its place. + +He went quickly out the front door and down to the entrance pulling his +hat brim well over his eyes on issuing to the street. As he did so he +grazed a lady leisurely passing. It was the plump and pretty Mrs. +Spottiswoode. Her glance met his fairly, but there was no sign of +recognition; she only drew her trim, modish skirt away from the contact +as she passed on. + +He walked more rapidly now. He could scarce keep from running--would +have done so but for the thronging crowds. The brandy he had drunk in +the office had roused the devil of craving; it was in his throat now +like the rasp of hot sand-paper and he craved more alcohol with a +desperate craving that would not be denied. At the edge of the open +square which held the railroad station he plunged into a saloon and +pushed through its groups of loungers to the bar. + +"A flask of whisky--the best you have," he said. + +The bar-tender wiped his hands on his duck jacket and took down a squat +bottle. "O. and S.," he said, affably. "Just blown in to town?" + +Harry stared him in the eye. "Wrap that thing up, and be quick about +it!" was his answer. + +The man in the duck jacket muttered something under his breath, banged +the package on the bar and rang up the payment on the cash-register +with an angry jingle. + +Harry thrust his purchase under his arm, went out, crossed the square +and climbed aboard a train that was drawing out. He went rapidly +forward to the smoker; there he--and the bottle he carried--would be +unnoticed. As he sat down in the rear seat, the conductor passed by. +Harry had no ticket. He handed him a bill. + +"Where to?" asked the other briefly. + +"How far do you go?" + +"Birmingham." + +"To Birmingham, then," said Harry. + +The afternoon wore on, station after station went by. The man in the +rear seat sat with his eyes straight before him, moveless except as +from time to time he lifted a bottle to his lips and drank thirstily, +avidly. The frenzied pain was gone now, leaving only a dull ache, and +gradually, very gradually, this too slipped away into the void. He was +now once more the man who had fled in his motor from the face of a +convict in a court-room, flying through the night in a jumbled dream, +strung upon a headlong speed through vacuity. + +Evening came, with the glamour of peach-blown valleys and honey-lipped +hills, lying under pale stars against the sunset. Night fell, with its +cooler breeze through the windows, its glimpses of quiet, watching +woods, of white mists wreathing across the meadows, of yellow lights. +But Harry took no heed. Only hours later, when the train rolled into a +great rotunda did he turn his head. He did not know where he was. He +did not even wonder. He rose, kicked the emptied bottle under the +seat, and left the train. + +He went out of the station. It sat on a ridge above a great river and +on the lower level he had a glimpse of a sordid purlieus of rambling +streets, red-paned windows and gleaming doorways, the soiled earmarks +of the city's slums. + +He crossed the street and plunged aimlessly down a narrow alley toward +the water-front. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +LIKE A THIEF IN THE NIGHT + +The potations in the smoking-car had had their first effect. Sevier +had passed from the jumbled dream now--was safe enisled in that strange +fourth-dimensional empire into which he had first wandered during that +wild night-ride in his motor, that region of tense consciousness that +was yet without rule, in which every sense was acute, his brain clear +as ice, but where impressions recorded themselves without +co-ordination. Eye and ear drank in avidly each sight and sound, and +he sniffed the thick smells as a hound sniffs a haunting but forgotten +trail. + +As he went further the dwindling signs of respectability vanished. He +was now below the city's "dead-line" where, in segregated wantonness, +vice and license unrolled their audacities fearless of the complaisant +police regulations. + +A hundred yards from the greasy docks lining the sluggish current from +which a plumy mist was lifting, a wide screened doorway showed a blaze +of electric-light upon a patch of saw-dust floor. Through it poured +the tinny blare of a gramophone hooting a comic song, mingled with +rumbling laughter and raised voices. It was a low-roofed, shambling +building, planned for the delectation of the barge-man and the +roustabout and now throbbing with their daily--and nightly--pleasures. +Harry halted before it. + +"Tough joint, eh?" The voice fell suddenly at his elbow. + +He turned. The speaker was red-cheeked and brisk, with dapper +sophistication and inquisitiveness written all over him. His shining +straw hat had a coloured band, there were white pearl buttons on his +patent-leather shoes and a natty stick swung lightly from his gloved +fingers. "I can see you don't belong with that crowd," he said, +nodding sagely toward the entrance. + +"No," said Sevier. He was staring at the speaker with a penetrating +intensity, thinking that, but for colouring and costume, they two +somewhat resembled each other--speculating as to the slanting scar on +the other's right cheek, that might have been the memento of a rusty +nail or of a pet panther--thinking of these things and of a thousand +things beside that were only remotely connected with either of them. + +"Neither do I, but I take a high dive into it now and then. Let's go +in and have a drink." + +In Harry's middle distance another more decorous swing-door vibrated to +and fro, with a sharp smell of hops, a rattle of glasses, a voice +reckless but good-humoured--proposing a like libation. Beyond this in +endless succession were openings and re-openings of a locked cabinet +that had hung somewhere on a wall, and further yet, myriads of goblets, +cut with shining prisms, reflecting rainbow colours on spotless napery. +A drink? + +"Why not?" he said, and striking open the door, led the way into the +noisy interior, reeking with stale odours, with strong tobacco-smoke, +with carouse and profanity. He strode across the floor, shouldering +his way unceremoniously through the press, and sat down at a small deal +table that was unoccupied. His companion seated himself opposite. He +was looking at Harry with critical admiration, noting his lithe +athletic build and the certain, confident swing of his movements. His +eye lighted. + +"Gad!" he said, with a little laugh. "To tell the truth I wouldn't +have cared to come in here alone, though I've been in a good many shady +boozeries. Allow me to introduce myself. My name's John Stark--that's +the name I play under, that is. I'm an actor. I'm trying out a new +play, the 'Jail-bird.' Perhaps you've seen the bill-boards." + +"Of course," said Harry. The title sprang instantly into his mind, +blazoned on a gaudy bill-board against a maple-shaded street: + + "Do not fail to see this Talented Star + In his Gripping Drama, _The Jail-Bird_." + + +It multiplied, stamping itself on a thousand walls, a chromatic +procession tumbling into the distance. The other nodded in a +self-satisfied way. "It's a great play. Got the real human dope in +it. It'll go big, too. That's why I come to these places--to study +'business.' See that teamster with the pock-marked face and the tattoo +on his arm? What a make-up that would be!" + +The burly, half-drunken driver, in red-flannel shirt with a snake-whip +in his armpit, his back to the bar, poured from a gurgling black +bottle. "Hear what it says?" he hiccoughed--"'It's +good--s'good--s'good--s'good--s'good!'" + +John Stark withdrew his eyes from the fascinating study, as a waiter, +in an apron that had in some remote epoch aspired to white, with a +strip of soiled towelling thrown over one arm, set two thick glasses on +the table, with a surly "well?" + +"I'll take a silver fizz," said the actor. + +"The same," said Sevier--"and be quick about it!" + +The harsh admonition thrust across the noise. The phrase had no +meaning to Sevier, it had been merely the echo of another bidding that +he had given at some other time, in some other world, repeating itself +now when the hidden spring of association was touched. But it brought +a resentful glare from the waiter. The loungers standing nearest +shuffled truculently, and the teamster by the bar turned an ugly look +upon them. The man in the dingy apron thumped down a black demijohn on +the table. + +"Take it straight or not at all," he said in a surly tone. + +Harry's companion poured both glasses. He leaned across the table with +sparkling eyes. "I'm in the title-role," he confided. "The story is +like this. I'm a business man, and the other chap--he has a grudge +against me--has me in his power. He's the Great What Ho--a regular +top-notcher, plenty of money, a winner with the women, horses, +steam-yacht, everything. The house he lives in was mine, but he's got +it by trickery and seized it while I was abroad. I come back and find +him in possession. But in the house--he doesn't know this, you +see--hidden behind a panel in the library, are papers that will show +him up and put him behind the bars. I've got to have those papers, and +the only way is to get into the place and take them." + +He paused and sipped from the glass before him, then resumed: + +"Curious thing, luck. I've had no end of trouble getting up the +scenery, but to-day I saw exactly the lay-out I want to picture--a +whacking big house in this very town. Right in the heart of the city +too, not a mile from here, but shut in from the road. Belongs to about +the richest man in the place. I kodaked it for my scene-painter. Look +here." + +He took a pencil from his pocket and sketched rapidly on the deal +table-top as he went on. + +"It's set in trees and there's a wide, oval porch along the front--like +this--fine old southern effect, eh?--with Cape Jessamine bushes under +the windows. A long wing runs down one side--here. In there is the +library. I come on in a kind of prologue, no lines--shadows and +moonlight, town-hall clock striking off one side--you know. I'm +desperate. I try the doors. They're locked, of course. But there's a +little window on the second floor that's open. I climb up a trellis +and crawl in. There I am in the house." + +He stopped and emptied his glass. + +"There's a two-minute dark--no curtain, but a quick change, then lights +up and the stage shows the Great What Ho's library, with me on the +threshold, for the opening scene. I get the papers from the panel, and +just then--" + +"Yes, yes," said Harry. He had been staring steadily at the +other--staring with his outer eyes, but with that curious inner vision, +which was the gift of the intoxicant he had drunk, seeing himself, +detached and moving through the significant scene that was being +sketched before him, his alert but liquor-bound mind filling in +strange, lurid detail which rushed forward to crowd the obscure spaces. +He reached forward and gripped the actor by the arm with a force that +made him wince--"and then--" + +A stillness had struck the noisier babble and Harry's mental connection +on a sudden broke. A young woman in the red Jersey and poke-bonnet of +the Salvation Army had passed about the room and was now standing by +the table. She stretched her tambourine. "If you please, gentlemen," +she said. + +Harry laid a silver half-dollar in her tambourine and his companion did +the same, when the waiter who had served them spoke to her: "Clear out, +you. You've got your money, now go." + +"And be quick about it!" said Harry, distinctly. + +The remark had not the excuse of proprietorship and it roused fury in +the sluggish minds about them to whom the addition was extraneous and +gratuitous, a smug insult of one who from his manner belonged to a +class that despised them, offered to one whose daily habit proved that +she did not. With an oath the drunken teamster of the pock-marked +visage lurched forward, rolling a red-flannel sleeve along a hairy +biceps. + +The dingy Ganymede thrust him back. "Leave him to me!" he ground +savagely, and turning, struck at Harry with envenomed force. + +The fist, however, did not reach home. Harry's brain and eye were +working with the deadly precision of the practised athlete. The +suggestion of combat was complete, and with sober caution and reason +dead, the bodily mechanism rushed to meet it. There was a +lightning-like parry--a crisp, smashing return blow. Then suddenly the +room turned a shambles, a red surging mass of hands that tore, of +thrown missiles, of shattering glass, through which sounded a shrill +whistle and the tattoo of a thorn-baton on the pavement outside. + +Two minutes later Harry stood unhurt in the open air, and a blue-jacket +held the door against a cursing pandemonium. "_Run_, you fool!" he +panted. "I can't hold it but a minute. _Run_!" + +And Harry ran. Not from fear or dread, but in instant response to that +mental spur, without reason, or logic, or conscious thought. The new +mental formula for the present moment superseded the old. The dingy +saloon, the effervescent young Thespian, the fight--all fell away, were +gone, and there was only the rigid empty calm through which he sped, +and far above him the sound of a wind like a silken sea. It was close +on midnight, the more decorous streets into which he presently emerged +deserted, for intermittent clouds were now blotting the moonlight and a +sprinkle of rain was falling. The sparse pedestrians stared or shrank +away, but none followed, no patrolling guardian of the law forbade. He +ran without direction or purpose, until suddenly--he halted. + +He had come to the side of a great enclosure, the grounds of a mansion, +surrounded by a high stone wall with tiled top, in which was set a gate +with tall posts holding dim-lit yellow globes. It was not at these, +however, that Harry was looking; his gaze went beyond, where, touched +by the rainy moonlight, stretched the long facade of a Colonial house +with a wide oval porch. At one side was a wing, with a lattice +climbing over its doorway, and the damp air was full of the scent of +jessamine. + +He stiffened. The contours fell with fateful correspondence over +another picture which had been etched on his brain that night with the +sharp outlines of a photographic plate. The old spring had been +touched, and the eerie mechanism was responding. It was his own house, +but now it sheltered the Great What Ho, and in that wing was hidden the +thing he must secure for his own salvation! + +Harry entered the gate and crept across the lawn, warily, from bush to +bush. In the curious dual-consciousness that seemed to divide his self +into two independent yet identical entities, he had no sensation of +strangeness that he should already have made that slinking journey once +before, that each detail should possess the quality of predestination. +In the shadow of the ivied walls he softly tried the front door. It +was locked, but he had known it would be. He looked up; he had known +what he should see--the small window in the wing, open, as he could see +from the swaying of the light curtain in the air. + +He crept to the lattice and deftly and softly drew himself up. No twig +snapped, scarce a leaf rustled beneath his careful movements. In a +moment he touched the sill of the open window and slid inside. + +He was in an upper hall and soft, luxurious carpet was under his feet. +By the dim light from the window he crept noiselessly down the stair. +There before him stood the door behind which lay the thing he must +have. He put his hand on the knob, turned it softly and opened the +door. + +The mental picture which he had been tracing suddenly frayed and +vanished like a dissolving view. The room was brightly lighted. At +one side sat a great safe, beside whose steel door stood two men, one +tall and thin, whose eyes glittered through the holes of a black +cambric mask, the other short and stocky with red-rimmed eyes and a +shock of sand-coloured hair. + +They stood like setters at point, crouching tensely forward, and the +latter held a pistol levelled at him. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +THE PRICE + +With the sudden disintegration of the mental picture he had been +tracing, and the instant stoppage of the tense action of mind and body, +Harry Sevier came to himself. He awoke as he had done on the night of +the trial, with the abrupt halt of his motor at the +railroad-crossing--awoke instantly to knowledge of himself, but dazed +and shaken, grasping at phantasmagoric fragments that were swiftly +dissolving in his brain, in a bewilderment in which he could only stare +voicelessly at the black mask that confronted him, at the round muzzle +that spelled danger. + +The man of the sand-coloured hair spoke: "It ain't him," he said in a +low voice. "Not one of the servants, either." He stepped forward. +"How did you get in?" + +"I don't--know," said Harry. "Yes, I--I fancy it was through a window." + +"What did you come for?" + +"I wanted to--get something." + +There was an instant's pause. Then his questioner came forward with a +cat-like tread. His free hand busied itself in deft exploration. "No +gun on him," he said. + +Something like a chuckle came from behind the mask. "I reckon he's +telling the truth, but he's a new one and we scared about all out of +his head there ever was in it!" + +The other turned one side to where a heavy portiere screened an alcove, +parted the curtains and set a chair in the hidden space. He pointed to +it. "Sit there," he gruffly commanded, and to the man in the mask he +added, "Get on with your part of the job. We won't take no risks--I'll +take care of _him_!" + +Harry sat down. The dream-like fragments at which he had been grasping +were gone now into thin air, and out of the misty limbo the past was +growing back: the note he had received, the smashed wall-cabinet, the +fiery drink that scorched his throat, his mad masquerade, the boarding +of the train at the station, the friendly, stupifying flash, then +flight, on and on--and then, this lighted room, the safe, the levelled +weapons! Into what sordid drama of the under-world had he wandered? + +He flinched at the pressure of a cold steel ring against his +temple--the man with the sand-coloured hair was "taking care" of him. +The latter leaned forward and peered searchingly into his face. +"Haven't I seen you before, somewheres?" he asked. + +"Who knows?" said Harry. He had answered that look by one that, even +as he spoke, had opened to strange intelligence. The stocky frame, the +small red-rimmed eyes, the up-thrust, wiry hair belonged to his client +of that far away trial, the man whom he had sent to a convict's cell +and who now, by route of ball and stripe, had fled to the dismal +demesne of habitual criminality! "Who knows!" Paddy the Brick had not +now the piteous, shrinking look that had been turned to his counsel in +the courtroom! The manhood was gone from the mottled features, which +now wore the furtive look of the hunted, the sign-manual of cunning, +incorrigibility and debauch. + +Paddy the Brick withdrew his eyes. The involuntary question had +passed. There was, after all, little in the smooth-shaven countenance +of the man he guarded to suggest a bearded face that his memory +searched for. + +"Quiet!" warned the man in the mask, and kneeling by the safe door, +resumed the delicate manipulation which had been so startlingly +interrupted. He turned the combination swiftly and deftly, his +side-face pressed against the unyielding steel, his ear listening +intently to the fall of the tumblers that chattered like elfin +castenets. + +Harry sat silent and moveless, sharply conscious of the cold ring +against his temple. Whither had his besotted flight carried him? To +some distant city, into another state perhaps, where he now figured in +a coarse and desperate adventure that might end anywhere, in some +shameful expose which he could not foresee. In whose house was he? +Whose money was it these nightly prowlers intended? And what ironic +demon had beckoned him here to play this passive part in the despoiling? + +There was suddenly a sharp click, a turn of the nickelled handle, and +on mute hinges the safe-door opened. "So!" said the man in the mask, +complacently. He began to pull open drawers and ransack pigeon-holes, +his fingers passing deftly through the papers they contained. + +On the instant there was a muffled sound in the hall outside--a door +swinging to, and voices. + +"_S-s-s!_" The low hiss was an incarnate menace. The man by the safe +swung the steel door to, but without closing its lock, and snapped off +the lights. The room fell into thick darkness. Harry felt, rather +than heard, that the other had swiftly entered the alcove, and drawn +the portiere into place. His companion had made no sound, but the +aching circlet bit hard again into Harry's temple, with a warning as +sharp as it was silent. + +The door opened, there was a groping footstep, then the lights went up, +and a woman's voice, clear and imperious, mingled with the lower +answers of the obsequious servant who had shown her in--a familiar +voice at which Harry's blood seemed to grow still in his veins: + +"No matter how late he is, I will wait. You say he is at his +office--is it so near as that? Yes, I think you may send for him--no, +wait--that telephone on the desk! Could I speak with him? No--I think +after all I would rather wait. What number did you say? +'Seven-thirty-two Sumner?' Thank you. Then if he does not come soon, +I will call him up. Thank you--no, I want nothing." + +Harry repressed an impulse to cry aloud. A thin streak of light showed +between the edges of the silken hanging, through which the man in the +mask was peering, and for a slender instant, under the crook's elbow, +he could see into the room. The slender figure standing there under +the chandelier was Echo Allen! + +She was in a dark travelling dress and wore a light veil through which +her profile looked strained and white. The unexpected sight of her +intensified the haggard pain of heart which had come back to Harry with +his awakening, and this was staggered by the knowledge that they two +were together in this unknown dwelling. + +The door closed upon the servant. Behind the portiere the red-rimmed +eyes peered questioningly into the eyelet holes of the black mask. +They said as plainly as speech, "There is only the woman. Why not make +for the open--now?" But the other was an older hand. The room had but +the single door and the servant might be standing on the other side. +Grim danger lurked in hue and cry, and there was always the chance that +the woman might weary of waiting and go. He had a liking for the long +chance. He shook his head. + +Harry's straining ears caught now the dragging rustle of a skirt. Echo +was moving slowly across the floor, and in a moment he saw her again +through the slender opening. She was standing tense and straight, her +hands wrung together, finger twisting against finger, before the desk +telephone. He saw her hand go out to the instrument, then draw back as +though it had been a poisonous snake. Then suddenly he saw her seize +the transmitter and put it to her ear. The bell whirred. + +"Madison, seven-thirty-two." + +There was a pause, in which she repeated the number, and in it Harry +felt that her face had hardened and set, like some cooling plastic +beneath an invisible mould. + +"Is that--is it ... Mr. Cameron Craig?" + +In spite of his iron control, Harry could not repress a start. He knew +now where he was! The house behind whose curtain he perforce skulked +with a brace of thieves, was Cameron Craig's! And she, on this very +day, had journeyed here too. A sense of an overfate, sardonic and +unescapable, rushed upon him. What a topsy-turveydom of chance, what a +dove-tailing of accident, had wrought for this strange _contretemps_! +In the instant she waited a harrowing question stabbed him. What was +she doing here, to-night, at midnight--in this environment which had +bred unseemly stories--to enter which, under such circumstances, a +woman must be unmindful of what should be most dear? + +"... Do you know my voice? Yes, you are right.... Unbelievable, yes. +Many things are unbelievable that--happen. Listen. I am at your +house, in your library.... No! Wait. I have something to say to you, +_now_. You shall answer it first. Once you asked me to marry you. I +will do so, on one condition.... The--the letters written by my +father. You will not use them, publish them. You will give them into +my hands.... Yes.... One has been photographed--yes, the plate. You +swear to do so, when I am your wife? ... Yes, to-night--if +you--wish.... What? In--in five minutes? ..." + +The receiver clattered down upon the desk, as she sank into a chair and +covered her face with her hands. To her the broken sentences had +knelled hope gone, the passing of youth and love, the coming of a night +in which was no star; but to the man sitting in such assiduous +stillness behind the curtains, they had told a story that sent the warm +blood coursing through his veins. Instead of being false to him, Echo +was really sacrificing herself on the altar of name and family. She +did not love the man with whom she had just spoken! It was constraint +that had sent her there at that dubious hour, to make a bitter bargain. +Letters written by her father? What they were--in what way +compromising--Harry could not guess. Some indiscreet correspondence +perhaps, which, twisted out of context, might be made ground of +malicious political criticism. He knew her love for her father. In +some way she had learned of these letters, had scented danger to him, +and now would ward the harm from him at any cost to herself! "Think as +gently of me as you can"--the words of her note passed through Harry's +mind. When she wrote that she had known that she should give herself +to Craig! He felt a whirl of rage. The cowardly, contemptible cad, +who would have his desire at the cost of all that was decent and +clean-handed! It should never be, never, never! Why else had fate +dropped him there, like a stone from a sling? And yet for the moment +he was as helpless as a rat in a trap. There, only a half-dozen steps +away lay those letters, the safe door unlocked. Yet the steely +pressure on his temple told him that a single word, a move, and he +would be ingloriously past rendering aid to anybody, with a bullet in +his skull. + +Harry was conscious that the two men beside him exchanged glances--they +were going to make a dash for it. His every nerve tightened. But at +that instant the door opened upon the obsequious servant. "Did you +ring, Madame?" he asked. + +"I rang the telephone," she replied dully. "I called up Mr. Craig. He +is coming." + +"Very good, madame." This time he did not leave, but moved about the +room, setting straight a book upon the table, adjusting a vase, +glancing furtively at her the while. The moment for flight had passed. + +Endless minutes ensued. Then in the strained silence there fell a +sharp step outside, and the servant went quickly from the room. Harry +felt a little tremor run over him. There was the sound of a key +grating in a lock. The outer door opened and clanged shut. + +Behind the portiere Harry sat motionless, the muzzle of the weapon at +his temple, his hair stirring to the suppressed breathing above his +head, and the man in the mask shifted his felt-shod feet, restlessly +but without sound. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +PADDY THE BRICK INTERVENES + +"I could not believe your voice." The heavy tones jarred across the +quiet. "I could not believe that it was actually true!" + +"Do you accept my offer?" Echo's voice was without a tremor; it held +the same hard quality that controlled her features. + +"Accept!" He came toward her--would have taken her hands, but that she +drew back. "Do you remember what I told you that day in your garden, a +year ago--that nothing counted, nothing but you? For you I would +barter every ambition I have ever known. I would sell the world, if I +had it!" + +"When you told me that," she said steadily, "I answered that I did not +love you. I have not changed in that regard, nor shall I ever change. +I can bring you no love, but I can--can marry you." + +He laughed harshly. "Very well; I would not have it different, after +all. I am not made on the pattern of other men: I would rather take +you against your will--you will be all the more mine! I love even that +fine disdain of yours! For it shall not last--I swear that! You shall +love me in the end, as I have loved you!" + +"Loved!" she repeated, with an accent of chill and wondering scorn. + +"Yes, loved!" The words were almost a cry: they held fierce protest, +even anger, yet there was in them a kind of appeal that lent them a +sombre and tragic dignity. "But you despised me! You had stood first +of all things. But if you could be nothing to me, then the game I +played stood second. I played, as always, to win. The cards fell +oddly--your father's letters, no matter how, came into my hands. They +were to my purpose, and I would have used them. Why should I hold +back? Out of regard for him? I regard no man!" + +"Yet he is my father. And you profess--ah, if this is love, I had +rather you hated me! I know nothing of a love that is neither brave +nor compassionate, that strikes at the aged and defenceless and that is +without--honour!" + +He had not taken his eyes from her face, and now there grew in them a +strange, haggard fire. Relentless and unscrupulous as was that love of +his, Harry could have pitied him at that moment. "Honour?" he said. +"It is an empty word to me! What is honour, what is anything, to me +without you--Echo, Echo!" + +"If you love me so--and now, indeed, I will believe it--give me the +letters!" She took a step toward him, her hands clasped together. "Be +as chivalrous as you are strong! Do not do this ignoble thing to break +my life! I may be your friend, if not--that other. Surely you cannot +want to take me at such a price! Do this and all my life long I will +be grateful! Oh, I would ask you on my knees! Give me the letters!" + +He looked at her where she stood breathlessly, with arms extended, her +face bent and pleading, and the sight opened wide within him an abyss +that thronged thick with evil passions. The gentler purpose that for a +heart-beat had fluttered white wings above the chasm dropped +plummet-like into the depths. Give her up? Now, when she came to him +with her offer? Resign her--to that tippling _dilettante_, that +flamboyant fop and fool who had drowned his success in a bottle? Not +he! A savage elation sprang up in him. + +"When you are my wife!" he said. + +She straightened, withdrawing her arms with a little gesture of despair +and relinquishment. "Where are the letters?" + +He pointed to the safe. "They are there." + +"When will you give them to me?" + +"To-night--the same hour you marry me. You shall burn them if you +like, here--in this very room--with your own hands." + +"You swear?" + +"I do. And whatever else men may say of me, there is no man living who +can say I have ever lied." + +There was an instant's silence and when Craig spoke again all feeling +had vanished from his voice. He was once more the deliberate and +incisive man of action. He snapped the lid of his watch. + +"It is very late," he said, "but it can be managed. It shall be at the +hotel--you can rest there while I make the necessary arrangements. My +chauffeur is off-duty to-night, but it is only a block away, +fortunately. Shall you mind walking?" + +"No," she said, apathetically. + +Harry was holding himself hard. They were going. He saw clearly his +course of action. His two partners in that sorry escapade might have +what they had come for--he could compound with them, could take the +letters to the hotel and put them into Echo's hands. She would never +need to know how he had gained them--that drunken episode, whose very +memory must bring a shaming flush to his cheek, should be buried +forever! The letters would not have come to her from Craig, and she +would stand absolved of her promise. But even as this ran through his +mind, fate thrust its hidden hand from the cloud. + +"One moment," said Craig. "When I came in, it was beginning to rain. +You will need a cloak of some sort." He turned abruptly to the +curtained alcove. + +The pressure on Harry's temple relaxed. The black mask thrust forward, +the man with the sand-coloured hair parted the hangings--his +outstretched arm shot out toward the advancing figure. Harry's gaze +saw something red leap up from Craig's temple, even before the +terrifying concussion rocked the room--a sound threaded by Echo's +scream. + +There was a rush, a curse and a scramble, flying feet and a dismayed +shout from the hall--then a shocked quiet in which he stood +disconcerted and appalled, staring between the shielding curtains, +through pungent smoke-wreaths, at a girl, her hand over her eyes, who +shrank in overmastering terror from a massive form that lay collapsed +on the rug before her--Cameron Craig, inert and still, blind and deaf +now to sight and sound, the brain empty of scheming, the full cup of +his ambition dashed from his lips by the crashing bullet of a slinking +house-breaker. + + + + +CHAPTER XX + +WHAT MATTERED MOST + +With that scream Harry's every nerve had become as tense as wire. In +his mind's eye he saw her innocency tangled in this hideous web of +burglary--perhaps of murder, her name on every lip, her face blazoned +in every yellow extra, as the "woman in the case!" The crisis spelled +_now_ and he acted with swift instinct. + +He snatched the black mask from the floor and adjusted it to his own +face, then darted to the safe and jerked open its heavy door. While +the retreating servant's alarm still echoed from the hallway of the +empty wing, his fingers, with the swiftness of desperation, went +searching the papers in the safe. He came almost instantly upon what +he sought--a thin packet of letters, tied together with a small +photographic plate, ticketed with the name "Beverly Allen." + +Echo had shrunk back, was leaning now against the wall, thriving terror +of him in her eyes. He came toward her. + +"Here!" he said, his voice muffled by the mask. "The letters! Take +them and go--go instantly!" + +"He has--killed him!" she gasped. "Why do you--" + +Harry was sick with apprehension. As in the instant of drowning the +smothering intelligence sees pass in vivid review before it the +innumerable mosaic of a busy life-time, so he saw, swiftly arrayed in +the imminent climax, the perilous hazards by which she was surrounded. +Suppose Craig was dead, and she were apprehended, the letters put in +evidence, and she told the truth, word for word, as she knew it. If +her own estimate of their significance was a correct one, might not the +most sinister suspicion then rest upon her? And if, as seemed likely, +she was wrong in that surmise--even were the presence of accidental +burglars proven--what could explain her presence there, alone in +Craig's midnight library? Would it not seem to the great sceptical, +sophisticated world only a tale invented to cover the old hackneyed +story of a woman's infatuation? Would it not ruin her? He thrust the +packet into her shaking hands, seized her arm and dragged her to the +hall. + +"Quick!" he said, roughly. "The house is roused! Hurry--for heaven's +sake!" He thrust her through the outer door. "Down the path to the +gate! Go!" + +She looked at him a breathless instant. On the floor above them a +window was flung open and a shout rang out. Then, drawing a breath +that was a sob, she caught the letters to her breast, turned, and fled +in an anguish of speed through the misty shrubbery. + +In the bluntness of the dilemma Harry's only thought had been to get +her away and speedily--then to make his own escape. For he himself +stood also in evil case. If Echo's presence there would be difficult +to explain, what could be said of his own? To whom, save perhaps the +occasional student of aberrant mental phenomena, would the true story +of his blind and besotted adventuring seem credible? It came to him +instantly now, however, that to insure her safe retreat, he must +jeopardise, perhaps fatally, his own. The two house-breakers had no +doubt planned their flitting--possibly a handy ladder in some hidden +angle of the wall; but the open gate was the only route he knew, and he +had sent Echo by this way. For him to follow in her footsteps would +draw the damnable hue and cry and double the odds against her. She +needed, perhaps, only minutes, but the stir of frightened awakening +that sounded through the upper floor told him that for him even seconds +might be fatal. Great beads of sweat broke on his forehead. + +And what an alternative! He, Harry Sevier, of position and clean +honour, to be arrested red-handed, in apparent comradeship with +criminals, a partner in a desperate attempt at robbery under arms! To +be haled to court, to sit as he had seen men sit so often, under a +perilous judgment! For with the logic of the legal mind perilous +indeed Harry knew it would be. If Craig lay dead in the room behind +him, he would be charged with his murder! A chill ran over him. + +As these thoughts rushed through his mind, Harry passed through a +crucial episode of his mental life--its first vital and supreme moment. +It was not of himself he thought now. It was only of Echo. What +became of him mattered little. It was she who mattered most! At +whatever risk to himself he must turn the pursuit from her! + +A burly man-servant, bareheaded and coatless, came panting from the +rear between the trees. Lest he take the path toward the gate, Harry +blundered, in his view, across the lighted porch and dashed around the +wing, the other giving instant cry. Harry led him on, doubling about +the shrubbery. Near at hand the wall reared, hopelessly high and +without a break. He skirted a huddle of servants' quarters, rounded +the main building and came again to the front. And then, approaching +at a double-quick across the lawn, he caught the flash of a bull's-eye. +With a wave of thankfulness he realised that the helmeted figure who +carried it was coming from the gate. Echo had passed through safely! + +Unseen he slipped again into the shadow of the great open door from +which he had come. Until that moment he had not realised that he still +held in his hand the black mask. There was nothing to do now--his own +escape was impossible, but he had saved her! + +Suddenly the hall light went up, and with it a brusque voice spoke from +the stairway. + +"Hands up! I'm covering you. He's here, lads--we've got him cornered. +Tell that silly maid to quit screaming and ring up the police." + +Harry had lifted his hands above his head. The black mask fell at his +feet. "All right," he said. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + +CRAIG'S WAY + +A half-hour later a surgeon and a nurse had been hurriedly summoned +from the hospital, the wounded man had been carried to an upper +chamber, and Harry Sevier set in a room across the hall from the +library, under guard, hand-cuffs on his wrists. A blue-coated +policeman stood grimly at his side, another at the door, and from time +to time the white, awed countenance of some servant appeared to stare +at him from the threshold and disappear. + +His own face, though haggard, was apparently unmoved by the strenuous +excitement that hung about the place, yet behind the affected +nonchalance his brain was in a turmoil of hope and of dread. In the +swift and breathless decision that the event had forced upon him he had +not had time to weigh all chances. It had seemed then that the vise +must grip either him or Echo, and that the choice lay in his hands. In +the moments that followed, however, as he sat moveless in the strident +confusion, he had realised that the problem had been by no means so +simple, and it had come to him with a pang that Echo's certain safety +had lain only in his own escape. + +She now believed that she had been extricated from danger by a common +thief who, in his rifling of the safe, had seen the letters she pleaded +with Craig for, and in the final tragic moment had taken pity on her +plight. When she learned that one of those house-breakers had been +Harry Sevier, what then? She would never believe him the vulgar +criminal! Her imagination would rush to another explanation which +would give his presence there a dismal significance. She would +conclude that he had somehow discovered the strait in which she +conceived her father stood, and in an attempt to retrieve the letters +had met Craig's chicanery with technical crime--made use, which to him +had seemed justifiable, of cracksmen, and with them had been caught in +the emergency whose sudden panic had evoked that shot from the alcove! +Whichever way the tragedy turned, it would be infinitely darkened for +her by the reflection that it had been her strait which had brought the +trouble upon him. + +And if murder had been done, and she learned with shrinking heart that +he, Harry, stood accused by the law, what then? She knew that his hand +had not pulled the trigger, for she had seen the face of the shooter. +Her gasping exclamation--"He has--killed him!"--had made that clear to +Harry. She would rush to the rescue, forgetful of all else, and with +her testimony, bring down the avalanche upon her! + +On the heels of these reflections a thrill of hope had come to him. +Craig was not yet dead--there had been no sign from above-stairs since +the hurried arrival of the surgeon. Also it was anticipated that he +would recover consciousness. Harry's knowledge of criminal procedure +told him that this was the meaning of his long detention there. Should +consciousness come, if merely for an appreciable interval, he would be +brought face to face with the wounded man. It was this that all +awaited now, and in it Harry discerned the sole possibility of saving +the situation. + +"Craig must have seen him when he fired!" he told himself. "For the +fraction of a second they were face to face. If he is able to make a +statement, it will clear me! He will be silent about Echo, too, for he +will expect, if he lives, to make her his wife--it will be a long time, +probably, before he misses the letters! And if I am disassociated, by +Craig himself, from the attack on his life, there will no longer be any +question of her involving herself to defend me!" His heart lightened +and the great load seemed to lift from his soul. It was the +implication of Echo that had made the situation impossible--the +unbelievable coincidence of their joint presence--in damnable +propinquity with the shooting. With Echo eliminated and he himself +free from that cowardly indictment, would not all yet be well? He was +well enough known. He was no sordid house-breaker--in spite of the +humiliating incident of his entrance there that night! + +His thought broke, as a spruce young man, with the air of authority +which is the perquisite and prerequisite of the private-secretary, +entered and whispered with the guardian at the door. + +Harry's heart seemed to stop beating. "Is he--dead?" he asked. + +The young man looked at him coldly. "Not yet." + +"Will he live?" + +There was a longer pause before the other replied: "It's too soon to +tell yet. It's up to you to hope so, I imagine." + +He whispered again with the officer, then crossed the hall to the +library, which he entered, closing the door behind him. + + +When the secretary reappeared he went quickly up the stair and along a +hall. There he tapped on a door and opened it. + +The room disclosed was the one in which Craig lay. At one side was a +small table covered with a white cloth, with a _melee_ of nickelled +instruments, rolls of absorbent bandaging and a basin of reddened +liquid. The air was full of the sickish-sweet _halitus_ of some drug. +Craig's head on the pillow was wound with the white swathing and the +nurse stood beside the bed. The doctor came forward, and the secretary +spoke to him in an undertone. + +All at once Craig opened his eyes. He looked acutely at the faces so +near him, the cloth-covered table with its instruments, the +white-capped nurse. + +"I--know," he said. He tried to lift a hand to his bandaged head. +"How--bad?" + +The doctor laid a professional hand on the one that strayed across the +coverlet. "We want to pull you through, Mr. Craig," he said with +soothing assurance, "and you must help us by wiping every anxiety from +your mind. Only a dozen words with your secretary here, to help you +stop even thinking, and then you are going to sleep." + +The young man came to the bed-side. "It was an attempted burglary, as +you probably realised, sir. Two men were hidden in the library and you +were shot when they tried to get away. One of them has been caught. +The servants say a lady was with you at the time and the police want to +know who she was." + +Craig did not reply immediately. Echo had slipped away in the +confusion! Well, so much the better. Her presence could not have +helped. It was no more to his interest than to hers--since she was to +be his wife--that the story of her midnight call should be bruited +abroad. "I--don't know--her," he said. + +"I'll tell them so," said the secretary. "The safe had been opened, +but its contents are practically intact. I have checked up all the +papers on the list and there seems to be only one thing missing. +Perhaps you took that out yourself. It is the last item on the list--a +package of letters." + +A quick gleam crossed the white face on the pillow. "Gone? No--no. +Impossible. They were--of no--value to--any one but me." + +"You may have put them in your desk," said the other. He turned to the +surgeon. "The police want to bring up the man for identification." + +The man of medicines frowned. "I suppose it has to be," he said. +"Tell them to do so quickly. Only a word," he warned the wounded man. + +A moment or two later the secretary tapped again at the door and it +opened upon the two policemen. Harry walked between, the chain on his +wrists clinking lightly as he stepped. One of them came forward to the +foot of the great bed. + +"You saw the man who shot you, Mr. Craig?" + +"Yes." + +He beckoned and Harry and his guardian moved forward into range of +vision. + +"You solemnly swear that what you shall say is the truth?" + +"Yes." + +"Is this the one?" + +Craig stared--a look of negation that made Harry's heart leap. It was +a look also that held no recognition, and in that instant, for the +first time since that night's harrowing series of events had begun, +Harry remembered that he stood in strange guise, in unaccustomed +clothes and with smooth-shaven chin. + +But into the eyes that gazed from the pillow recognition speedily +came--recognition strangely commingled of incredulity, amaze, +distempered suspicion, leaping swiftly to a slow, deadly certainty. A +lurid sequence was running across the fevered mind that the man +confronting him could not read: + +Harry Sevier sculking there and disguised--one of the burglars! The +missing letters--Echo had gone with them! It had been a cunning, +hypocritical plot, then, with a hired safe-robber and thug--and they +had tricked and baffled him. Craig gasped. His eyes suffused with +blood. He had said that he had not known the woman. Yet he could +still score! Living or dying, he could drag down Harry Sevier to a +black depth from which he should never rise again! + +He laughed, a harsh jarring laugh. His face became convulsed. He +tried to lift himself on an elbow. The nurse thrust her strong arms +beneath the pillow and raised him. He pointed his finger at Harry. + +"Yes!" he said in a crackling whisper. "He is the man who--did it! +He--shot me!" + +"Do you know him?" The officer spoke clearly, leaning forward. + +"Yes. I--he is--" + +But that was all. With a final vain effort, his head fell back on the +pillow. That last flare of rage, of revengeful hatred, had exhausted +the sick vitality, and he was gone into unconsciousness. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + +HARRY DECIDES + +The steel handcuff bit more hardly into Harry's wrist, but he did not +feel it. His eyes were fixed and his face had grown grey. The +accusation, with all its shuddering implications, had surged over him +like the assurance of the unescapable end, the last engulfing wave of +hopeless finality which, in its subsidence, left him cold and still. +Malice and hatred had closed the door of hope. + +His sacrifice had gone for nothing. He could not save Echo. The +matter had been taken from his hands. She must be involved. If murder +had been done, her passionate denial in his defence would no doubt +suffice to save him--he knew his southern juries!--but at what a price +to her would be his salvation! For though sufficient doubt would be +insinuated to legally acquit him, in the eyes of their world harrowing +suspicions must always cling to her. Collusion between her and +himself, her lover, to secure compromising letters, a guilty +understanding embracing possible murder! A midnight _rendezvous_ with +one lover, converted into swift tragedy by the vengeful pursuit of the +other! So the speculations would run, and the baleful whispers would +follow her all her life. What matter though she married him? Would +love make up for that? + +It was the Harry Sevier of remorseless logic, of clear thinking and +rigid analysis, who reasoned now. + +A tall old clock stood at the turn of the echoing stair and as he +descended between his two uniformed attendants, grimly watchful of his +every movement, he noted mechanically that it was two o'clock. It came +to him with a chill and awed amazement how much might happen within one +round of the clock. When those hands had last pointed to two o'clock +he had stood in his office, a man of reputation and newly-ordered life, +with all his heart beating to love; now he was disgraced, the woman he +loved about to know the shame and hideous notoriety of scandal, both of +them to be pilloried together as principals in another of those +horrifying revelations of double-life which at periodic intervals shock +a community's decorum! + +It was not for himself he was thinking first. His pain for Echo +swallowed up his own. As he sat in the cab between his guardians, +bound for the station-house and the police interrogatory that should +fling abroad its sensation in the morning's papers, his composure +crumbled. He bent and put his cold face in his colder hands. His lips +moved voicelessly. + +"Echo ... Echo!" he whispered. "You have had my love, you have it now. +You could have my life, if I could give it--every day, every drop of my +blood, would not be enough to pay the price of what you must bear! But +it is out of my power. I thought I could save you, my darling! But I +can't.... I can't.... If I might only suffer alone, and you never +know!" + +He lifted his head with a start. A thought had darted to his mind like +an impinging ray of light. Why _should_ she ever know? Why should any +one know--if Craig died? Only Craig who had known him in the past, had +recognised him as Harry Sevier. Perhaps that was the greatest risk he +should have to run. He could take refuge in silence, tell nothing, +explain nothing. She would not know that the real shooter had not been +taken. Could he maintain under the searching purview of the law that +anonymity which he had sought to insure during the debauch into which +he had so avidly plunged yesterday afternoon? Why not? He had so +adjusted his home affairs, luckily, that a long time--perhaps many +months--would elapse before his absence would be narrowly questioned. +He was now in a city where he was not known: hundreds of miles of steel +rails lay between him and the crowds to whom he was a familiar figure. +His dark beard--so distinguishing a feature--was gone. He had +discarded the characteristic gold-rimmed eye-glasses. Not an article +of clothing he wore bore his name. His present face might be flung on +printed pages to the four winds, and who, even of those who had seen +him day in and day out, would say, "It is Harry Sevier!" + +There were but two contingencies. If Craig recovered sufficient +consciousness to speak the name that had fainted on his lips when they +two had been face to face in that room of hurried surgery--then his +incognito would fall and fate must have its way. If Craig died without +recovering consciousness--this, provided his own identity was not +discovered, was the one way out for Echo. + +For him it meant, probably, the last risk. He had now to meet no mere +assumption of guilt, but an accusation, direct and unqualified, made +under oath, in what might well be the hour of death. He could not +offer in rebuttal evidence of character, reputation and standing. He +was deliberately refusing to call his only witness to the fact. Yet he +did not waver. The Harry Sevier who under the stress of impulse had +acted so swiftly to save the woman he loved, elected the same choice +now. + +He would do it. Whatever the risk, whatever the ultimate cost to him, +he would do it! + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + +THE BROKEN PICTURE + +"Hyuh yo' is, honey, smack-dab on time!" called 'Lige's cheery voice, +as he took Echo's bag. "Yo' fo'got ter say which train yo' comin' back +on yistiddy, so ah ben waitin' wid dee cya'age fo dee las' fo'. Ah was +figuratin' on yo' gittin' hyuh fo' dinnah, sho'." + +As they bowled along toward home Echo wondered if she could really be +the same girl who had driven away the day before along those self-same +streets! The strenuous events through which she had passed seemed the +terrifying creation of a dream, a nightmarish panorama of the sick +imagination, so wild and incredible all appeared in the serene light of +this day: The painful scene in Craig's library that had ended in swift +tragedy, with the apparition between the portieres of that baleful +face--with its narrow eyes and upthrust of nondescript hair it had +stamped itself ineffacably upon her memory!--the deafening shot and the +after confusion--those breathless moments when she had run along the +wet path, with a sense of flashing lights and alarm behind her--her +safe emergence into the demure street, where she dared not run, +compelling herself to walk albeit ready to faint with fear at sight of +a patrolling policeman--the ghastly delay in the stuffy waiting-room of +the station where she had checked her bag on arrival--the suffocating +relief when at last the express pulled out, bearing her away +unchallenged. + +Through the long night she had tossed feverishly in her berth, without +undressing, at intervals feeling the meaning of the catastrophe in +which she had figured surge over her in a flood. That catastrophe +itself had saved her from one horror: but for it she would now be the +wife of Cameron Craig--a thought that made her shiver. Now she was +safe! In all that trip, fortunately, she had encountered no one she +knew. She had seen but one servant at the house and in his presence +had worn a light veil. Only Craig had known who she was! What if she +had been taken--held as a witness? How could she have explained her +presence except by the letters for whose suppression she had been ready +to give her life's happiness? As in imagination she saw her father and +herself pictured in the yellow press, the centre of gossip and +humiliating notoriety, she hugged the letters to her breast with +intensest gratitude toward the desperado who had extricated her from +the instant crisis. With what swift self-possession he had acted for +her safety! That in that lightning-like emergency he should have even +thought of the letters filled her with astonishment. Over and over +again she tried to picture his face behind the mask, as his hand had +held out the packet to her. Her senses had been shocked keenly alive +at the moment: she had even noted--as in tense crises one notes +inconsequent trifles--the ring on his finger with its curious, square +green stone. A thousand times she lost herself in wonder that a man +capable of such a deed to an unknown woman could yet be a common +burglar, one of the desperate gang whose leader was now awaiting trial, +and whose malignant face and levelled pistol haunted her. Then the +shuddering thought would roll over her that she, Echo Allen, had +witnessed the awful act of murder, and she would hide her face in her +pillow, trembling and spent. Dawn had long been whitening the windows +when the strained nerves relaxed and the body, fatigued by two +sleepless nights, found fitful rest. + +The sun had been high when she awoke and by the time she had made her +toilette and drunk a cup of coffee she had reached the little station +for which she had ostensibly started the preceding day. A rambling +hack had taken her to the home of her aunt--a recluse who had for a +dozen years regarded the outer world through the blurred medium of +semi-invalidism, absorbed in her languid reading and her flowers. On +arrival Echo had found the frail figure lying out among her roses, with +white, wild butterflies flaunting about her, stronger than she had been +for months past, and free from the querulous humours which generally +held her. So keen was her delight in her betterment that Echo had +found it easy to accomplish her own departure after luncheon, though +she generally stayed the night. There was for the present, therefore, +no added absence to be accounted for, and the lapse of time might never +have to be explained. + +As she drove now from the station through the bustling, down-town +streets toward Midfields, the knowledge that her father's secret was +safe overshadowed all the pain through which she had passed. The +dreadful memory dulled in the sunshine and the sense of security buoyed +her. She would never have to tell her part in that terrible night to +any one. Not even to Harry: she could tell him that she had never +loved any one but him: that it had been misunderstanding that had +driven her to send him that unhappy note. Her father himself need +never be made aware that she knew his secret. It would be forever dead +and buried! + +She bade 'Lige stop at the post-office. At her aunt's she had wrapped +the letters in thick wrapping-paper and sealed and tied the packet, and +this she now addressed to her father, printing the words in a large, +round hand. Then she bought some stamps, affixed them at one of the +desks that lined the corridor and smudged them with ink to simulate a +postmark. Once at home it would be easy to slip the parcel among his +evening mail. He would believe that Craig had relented of his purpose, +would destroy the letters, and the danger would be gone forever! + +Lastly, standing in the thronging thoroughfare, at the same dusty +little desk, on a sheet of paper which she bought at the stamp-window, +she wrote to Harry Sevier: + + +Forget the note I sent you yesterday. Count that it was never written, +that everything--everything!--is as it was when we sat on the porch +together the day before. I can't write the rest--but come to me +to-night, and I will tell you. + +ECHO. + + +She sealed and addressed this--as an afterthought, marking it +_urgent_--and went out to the carriage. A few minutes later the horses +drew up again, this time before the populous office-building that held +Harry's offices. + +She climbed the stair slowly, her heart hammering. She intended to +hand the note to his clerk. If Harry had gone home, it would be sent +to him there. On the landing she stopped, her breath coming quickly. +The mahogany door was open and she could see a little way into the +outer office. If she came face to face with him, what should she say? + +But no sound of voices, no rustle of paper or scratch of pen, came to +her. She went nearer--the place was empty. She took a hesitant step +or two into the room. The door of the inner office was open--that was +empty too, and its big desk closed. Harry was not there, but the +clerk, at least, should not be far off, as the door had stood wide. +She went closer and peered into the inner office. Facing her from the +wall was a small cabinet, its door, from which splinters of opaque +glass were scattered about the rugs, smashed through as if by a heavy +blow. Beneath it, on the desk-top, was a black bottle and a stained +glass, tipped on its side. + +All at once she started. She had caught sight of something that lay in +the fire-place. She went and picked it up: it was a picture of +herself--one she had never known Harry possessed--a photograph of her +portrait that had been hung in a certain spring salon in Paris. It had +been framed in silver, but frame and picture had been broken across, +savagely torn and twisted into a remnant of metal and cardboard. + +She dropped the defaced thing with a little cry and caught a hand to +her breast. What must he have been thinking in that moment of ruthless +destruction? It had been after he had read her note to him! Her +cheeks flamed. Did he now despise her for what he had thought her +flippancy, or hate her for having taken his love only to throw it away +like an old glove? As she looked again at the riven cabinet and the +bottle on the desk, a shiver of dread seized her. From the silent +symbols there stood forth outlines that frightened her. + +She went slowly out to the hall, the letter she had intended to leave +crushed up in her hand. At the top of the stair stood a tall window +and she halted in its embrasure and leaned against the sill, hearing +dully the muffled clack of the street and trying to see a mental way +through the confusing conjectures that were leaping, like lurking +beasts of prey, upon her. As she stood there voices sounded behind +her, coming from the other end of the hall--the clerk was returning +with a comrade: + +"'No,' says he. 'Don't know _when_ I'll come back.' Thought he looked +a bit off coloured, too. Told me to close up the office till I heard +from him, and not to forward anything. Rum go, eh?" + +"Seems like mighty poor business," ventured the other. + +The clerk sniffed. "Business!" he exclaimed. "Much Sevier cares about +that! A man with a brain like his and a silver tongue to boot doesn't +need business! But after that speech of his the other day I should +think he'd sit tight as wax to those Civic Club people. They're going +to make a real campaign of it and he could get on the ticket sure. +It'd be a _cinch_! Why he wants to light out abroad somewhere beats +_me_! Well, _I_ don't care how long he stays. I'm going to shut up +the shebang to-night and put in some good licks for my law-examination." + +They entered the office and the door closed upon their voices. + +Echo stood motionless, looking down into the street. Harry had gone +away! He had gone with despair and anger, or worse than anger, against +her in his heart leaving behind him only that mangled portrait and that +ominous bottle on the desk! Where had he gone, and when should she see +him again? + +Just across the way a knot of people was gathering in front of a +newspaper bulletin-board whereon a great white sheet was being pasted, +and her gaze--first mechanically, then with a start of shrinking +comprehension--read the staring headlines that had been roughly +lettered upon it: + + + CAMERON CRAIG SHOT DOWN BY BURGLAR + + DESPERATE MIDNIGHT ENCOUNTER IN FINANCIER'S LIBRARY + + WOUNDED MAN UNCONSCIOUS BUT STILL ALIVE + + MYSTERIOUS WOMAN INVOLVED + + +Cameron Craig was not dead! If he lived, he must one day learn that +the letters were gone from the safe. Would he not then connect her +with their disappearance? What would he do? She was aware, unhappily, +to what lengths he was capable of going! Even though the letters were +not his, would he accuse her of stealing them--_her_? + +As she drove away the last two lines seemed to imprint themselves on +her eyeballs in monstrous symbols of flame. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + +THE WOMAN WHO KNEW + +June came with its gold-born days, its passionate bird-songs and scents +of roses, its shimmer of willow and pine and burnished lustre of +down-bent holly-leaves and its evening mists wreathing the tall garden +shrubs like wedding-veils. But the beauty and passion of the throbbing +season came to Echo with a sense of mockery. + +The night of her return she had carried out her plan as regarded the +letters and her father had believed the package had arrived with his +mail. When a little later he had told her that Cameron Craig had sent +him the letter whose publication had been threatened, years had seemed +fallen from his shoulders. She had been content that he should deem +the act significant of the other's better nature emerging from the +slough of an ignoble temptation--satisfied to know that in his mind the +fact that it should have been one of the last acts Craig had performed +before the tragedy, had invested it with a quality of the fateful and +foreordained. Her own thought was absorbed with other things. + +She had read avidly, though with unspeakable dread and loathing, the +newspaper accounts of the affair. The refusal of the arrested man to +tell his name or where he came from, or to explain in the slightest +detail--except brazenly to deny any part in it--the crime which had set +the city in which it had occurred agog, had been duly chronicled; but +the condition of the victim--since Cameron Craig was a power in the +community--had absorbed a greater part of the popular interest, and the +daily bulletins of his physicians had called forth far more comment +than the unknown criminal whom he had identified as the man who had +shot him. She had felt a great relief, also, in the knowledge that +Craig had declared that he had not known his feminine visitor; and +while the dread had inevitably lifted that when he discovered the loss +of the letters he might betray her, it had faded at length in the +certainty that, though he lived, the brain-injury had left him with +clouded consciousness. Day after day he had lain voiceless, the outer +injury gradually and surely yielding to the medicaments of healing, but +the brain lapsed into a semblance of vacuity, inert and unresponsive, a +mild phantom of the old Craig, the bodily functions become mere +mechanism, the mind blank and fallow, its inner hurt waiting a +diagnosis beyond the skill of local practitioners. + +But though the secret Echo carried shut within her breast thus grew +less painful with the passage of time, another dread was slowly drawing +out of her heart its warmth and glow. This was the deeper hurt of +Harry Sevier's absence. + +Going about her daily affairs she thought of him without ceasing. She +never drove through the streets that her gaze did not search the busy +pavements--never passed the building that held his office that her eyes +did not lift fearfully to its blank and blinded windows--never heard +the postman's brisk step on the porch that her heart did not beat +chokingly. Where had he gone? Chilly knew of no one who had received +a letter from him. Aunt Judy, his cook, was as ignorant as she. She +had even interviewed Suzuki, but it had been plain that the Japanese +could tell nothing. + +The recollection of the bottle and the overturned glass she had seen in +his office recurred to her again and again, with all their bitter +suggestions of surrender, relapse and demoralisation. Could it be that +he had thrown away his hard-earned victory, hurled himself again into +the pit from which he had so painfully climbed, which now might hold +him forever? And coupled with this sickening thought came the +reflection: what if Harry should die, far away somewhere, perhaps in +some foreign country, without seeing her again, without ever knowing? +There were hours, too, when, woman-like, she wondered whether he had +cared so much: whether he had not found comfort in absence and given +his love elsewhere. + +Her cheeks grew paler day by day, and in spite of herself her step +lagged and lassitude grew upon her. Often she felt her father's +anxious look and knew that her mother, in her stately and +undemonstrative way was deeply disturbed. She took without protest the +tonics Doctor Southall prescribed, but they brought little betterment, +and, as physicians will, he at length began to talk of a sea-trip. In +her growing apathy plans of this sort meant nothing to Echo, but she +believed Harry had gone abroad, and the chance that they might meet, +however slender it might be, called to her. When Mrs. Spottiswoode, +therefore, announced her annual migration to Paris for her winter's +wardrobe, it was arranged that Echo should make the voyage under her +chaperonage. + +Meanwhile the date had arrived for Echo's usual summer's visit to Nancy +Langham in the neighbouring capital. Ordinarily a stay at the home of +the girl of whom she was so fond, would have been something to look +forward to with unmixed delight. Now, however, it had become a thing +to shrink from. To walk those streets--perhaps to see again the house +whose very memory had been such an anguish to her--she would gladly +have evaded this. But when Nancy's letters promised to pass from +pleading to epistolary tears, she at length yielded and late August +found her the Langhams' guest for a final weekend. + + +As she dressed, on the afternoon of her arrival, there was a tap at the +door and Nancy's voice said, "May I come in, dear? I want to see what +you are going to wear." + +"Yes, come in. I'm almost ready." + +Echo had chosen a gown of black _tulle_ with a gold rose at the +brocaded girdle and Nancy looked at her admiringly. "Gracious!" she +exclaimed. "That black--it positively sets your hair on _fire_! It +makes you so pale, though. Do put a little dab of pink on your cheeks, +Echo; you make me look positively lurid beside you!" + +There was some truth in the comparison, for the younger girl was like a +wild-rose, quivering with life and colour. She took the hare's-foot +and came to Echo coaxingly. "Just a little tinge ... like that. +There! Now you are just perfect." + +"Who's coming to tea, Nancy?" + +"Oh, only a handful--Mrs. Moncure. You met her last year--and Mr. +Meredith: he's the District Attorney--and the Shirley boys: they're +very young and College-y--and five or six others. I only asked a few." + +The Shirleys were first to appear and were followed by Mrs. Moncure, a +mellow, winy woman with a white gown that smacked of the _Rue de la +Paix_, and a complexion exquisitely made up. She greeted Nancy with a +smiling graciousness, nodded to the gentlemen, and sat down on the sofa +beside Echo. + +"It was so sweet of Nancy to ask me to come," she said. "I've never +had half a chance to chat with you before, though we met last year at a +particularly stupid reception or something. This is so much more +home-y, isn't it?" She dropped into smalltalk, rippling and charming, +while Nancy poured the tea, and when Mr. Meredith presently arrived she +presented him. + +"Our District Attorney," she announced. "The Terror of the Lawless!" + +"Now don't tell me I look a terror!" said he, beseechingly to Echo. +"I'm a most mild-mannered man in private life, am I not, Mrs. Moncure?" + +"I'm not sure yet whether I can give you a character," she answered. +"I haven't seen this year's subscription-list to my pet charity." + +"Blackmail!" the other asserted indignantly. "I'll subpoena you all as +witnesses. And this is how I am treated for protecting you from +criminality!" + +"I like _that_!" exclaimed Nancy wickedly. "When burglars hide in our +alcoves and jump out and shoot us when we're not looking! Poor Mr. +Craig! _I_ think you ought to be impeached, or impounded, or whatever +they call it." + +He laughed. "You know of the Craig affair, of course, Miss Allen," he +said, turning. + +Echo was glad for the touch of rouge on her cheeks. "Yes," she +answered. "Oh, yes." Her gaze was on the basket of tulips on the +tea-table, but she was really seeing Craig's smouldering black +eyes--the lowering brows--the ruthless clamped lips--as she had seen +his face in that moment of revealment in his study. + +"The trial of the man who shot him opened to-day," continued Meredith. +He looked again at Nancy. "It's up to the police to prevent +burglaries, you see. My part comes after the burglars are caught. I +point the moral--as a deterrent to others still at large." + +"I hope, then," said Mrs. Moncure, "that the moral will be well pointed +in this case. I didn't sleep for a week after it happened." + +"I shall certainly try to get him the limit," declared the attorney. +"It'll be a long time before you need fear another midnight call from +him, Miss Langham. While you are at the matinee to-morrow, please +remember that I am vociferating frantically at the jury in your behalf. +I surely deserve a cup of tea for that, don't I?" + +"Well, on consideration, perhaps you do," asserted Nancy judicially, as +she poured. "I'll relent." + +She sat smiling, her dainty hand on the old silver urn, not observing +how the smile had been stricken from Echo's face. Meredith noted the +latter's strained look, however, and said, as he seated himself, "You +mustn't think we are prone to such melodramatics. We don't have them +often. This case is somewhat peculiar from the fact that the police +can't identify the man we are trying. We don't know who he is or what +is his record. For of course he has one." + +"But," interposed Mrs. Moncure, "I thought criminals were always +photographed--don't they call it the 'Rogues' Gallery'?--and measured, +so they _could_ be identified." + +"My dear lady," he replied, "for two years I've been trying to bring +this city up to date in that very thing. The state has the Bertillon +system, but it's in use only in the penitentiary, as a permanent +record. The data, however, should be taken when a criminal is +arrested, and there ought to be a system of exchange of these records +with all penal institutions. There would be no temptation then to turn +a bare-faced burglary, coupled with felonious assault, into a romantic +mystery, as this man's counsel, my friend, Mason, judging from the line +he took to-day, will try to do." + +There was a pause, as he possessed himself of another scone. + +"I wonder," said Mrs. Moncure, presently, "if we shall ever know who +she was--the woman who was with Craig when he was shot." + +Meredith laughed a little. "I imagine it's not likely," he returned. +"He has declared once that he didn't know her, and we can all +understand her own passionate reticence on the subject!" + +Mrs. Moncure smiled as she rose. + + "Oh Sin! Oh Sorrow! and Oh Womankind! (she quoted) + How can you do such things and keep your fame, + Unless this world, and t'other too, be blind? + Nothing so dear as an unfilched good name!" + + +For Echo the smiling words were barbed and winged with a painful +significance. Again and again, as she chatted mechanically over the +tea-cups, they came back to her, coupled with the memory of the stories +she had heard of Craig--the whispered allusions made with shrugs and +lifted eye-brows. + +As she lay in bed that night, she felt her hot cheeks flush through the +darkness. Could the world think that of her--if it knew? + + + + +CHAPTER XXV + +ON TRIAL + +The painful suggestions that had come to Echo over the teacups +possessed her next day, when she drove with Nancy in the morning and in +the afternoon, alone, selected her final steamer purchases--for she had +made her farewells at home and was to go next day directly to New York, +meeting Mrs. Spottiswoode on board the steamer. She was restless and +uneasy and the thought of the trial proceeding at the court-house that +day obsessed her. Here she was, she, Echo Allen, save for the escaped +marauders themselves, the only one who had witnessed the deed whose +imagined details the law was now laboriously reconstructing only a +block away. + +The thought brought a burning self-consciousness which began to be +threaded by a fearful curiosity. She was feeling the repellent +fascination that the scene of a hazardous episode ever after possesses +for the secret actor in it. + +Instinctively the lode-stone had drawn her steps to Court House Square. +She looked across at the broad, open doorway. Why not go in? She had +attended trials at home. She could find a place in the rear where she +would be unobserved. For an instant the thought crossed her mind that +the prisoner might recognise her, but then she remembered that on that +night at Craig's house she had worn a light veil. + +She crossed the square quickly, and with sudden decision went up the +steps and into the building. An usher sat on a stool by a door that +stood ajar and before she knew it he had pushed it open and she found +herself in the court-room. + + +In that room, unguessed by all who had watched and listened during the +dragging trial that was now rushing swiftly to end, weird forces had +been contending. In touch with the old, familiar things, but with a +high-coloured unnaturalness, Harry Sevier had stood ceaseless guard +over his secret, every sense and instinct on the _qui vive_ to minimise +the chances of recognition. + +The night of his arrest, as he lay sleepless in his police-cell, he had +thought out certain obvious details of the game he intended to play and +had lost no time in putting them into practice. He had worn his waving +hair, rather long; during his detention he reversed this habit and +instead of its customary parting, brushed it straight back from his +forehead. Later he took stock of personal mannerisms and altered by +unrelaxing watchfulness and determination the natural register of his +voice. Always his mind had retained the sense of fate that had come to +him when he sat in the alcove with Paddy the Brick's pistol clapped to +his temple. Drink had driven him to that strange journey that had +ended in tragedy, but had it not been, nevertheless, some over-ruling +design that had brought him to Craig's house, where the unbelievable +accident of his presence had saved Echo? But for that, she would now +be Craig's wife, or the centre of a wretched scandal. If he held his +course, and played his cards as they fell, perhaps fate would guide him +still! So far the gipsy ring had brought him luck, he thought +whimsically, and he had kept it on his finger. + +But withal, it had been a straining interval. There had been, first, +the fear that Craig would die, casting its grisly shadow across the +floor; and this had woven with the dread, that never lessened, of the +moment when he should recover consciousness. The first morning's +newspapers had made a feature of Craig's assertion that he did not know +the woman who had awaited his coming in his library; but Harry held in +his mind the certainty that his own recognition must inevitably result +in Echo's involvement. + +He had adopted his course of silence because it was the only one open +to him at the moment, but the event had justified his choice. It was +the unexpected that had happened. The time-limit of the law which +bounds murder had passed, and Craig was still alive. Nor had he +recovered consciousness. But even with these assurances, Harry had had +hourly to fight with the dread of some accidental confrontation which +should pierce the screen and this dread had infinitely increased with +the opening of the trial, when he became perforce the cynosure of +hundreds of curious eyes. + +But here also fate had been kind. It was now the second day of the +proceedings, for Harry's personal qualities, no less than his strange +pertinacity, had roused a keen professional interest in the attorney +who had been assigned to defend him, and the latter had made a fight +which his client, whose legal experience judged the outcome certain, +would gladly have exchanged for the inept blunderings of the veriest +tyro. + +However, no chance encounter had betrayed him and as the District +Attorney rose for his final clinching of the nail of evidence, Harry +had felt a great relief that the ordeal was so nearly finished. + +Almost the great danger was past! With his conviction and the passing +of sentence upon him, the Judicial arm of the law would have delivered +him to the Executive. Danger of publicity would be over, and Echo +might be told the truth, without danger of recoil upon herself. A +thousand times in his cell he had wondered how he should accomplish +this. In some way it could be brought about--some safe and secret +way--just how he would have leisure to decide. No one, not even Mason, +his counsel, need be trusted with the significant secret that had such +power to blast. She must be well instructed so that no false step +could mar his plan. She must take no one into her confidence--must +tell her story privately to the Governor, who had known her from her +childhood. He was a just and discreet man and Harry did not doubt the +outcome. His own story could supplement hers, and after a sufficient +interval, executive pardon would quietly release him. He could step +back into his old niche, and all would be as before. Even if Craig +recovered, he would be powerless, since an accusation could not lie +against a pardoned man, and Craig would not bring a charge that was at +once bootless and incredible. Nor would he wreak an empty revenge upon +Echo. He had once declared that he had not known the woman in the +library, and, since she was lost to him in any case, he would not +hazard a public reversal of his testimony that all would unite to call +dastardly. The one thing Craig valued which men in the mass could give +him, aside from power and money, was his place in the social sun, and +he would not risk this. In the publication of the letter, or letters, +that would have involved her father, he doubtless would not have been +publicly known; in this matter he would run the gauntlet of popular +southern opinion and would be well aware that the act would damn him. +So Harry told himself. The real story would be buried, and the +world--his world and Echo's--would never know! + +Thus he was thinking as he listened dully to the prosecutor's scathing +_resume_. His elbow was on the long table by which he sat, his brow in +his hand, shielding his eyes from the sunlight that sent darting arrows +across the cool, dim room as the windowshade waved in the light breeze. +He could not see the door at the rear of the room swing open, nor the +figure of the woman who entered--to pause, momentarily confused in the +quick transition from the sunny Square to the shadow of the interior. + +Echo's heart was beating hard as she slipped into a vacant seat next +the aisle, conscious that the man who was speaking was Meredith, whom +she had met at tea the day before, and that he was closing his final +speech for the prosecution. She looked about her, at the jury who +seemed apathetic and a trifle bored, at the Judge who was writing +perfunctorily on the pad before him, and then her gaze slipped, +half-stealthily, to the long table before the bar, where the prisoner +should be sitting. But though she leaned forward to look, she could +not see him for the intervening figures. Then, suddenly, the +deliberate, judicial utterance of the District Attorney caught her +attention. He was rounding to a final period and the meaning of what +he was saying smote through her self-command to the last, inner corner +of her shrinking consciousness and made the room whirl about her: + +"The counsel for the defence has attempted to read a romantic meaning +into the obduracy with which this thief and would-be murderer has held +to his policy of silence. He has invited you to believe that this +silence indicates a noble desire to shield a woman's reputation. The +name of a woman who thrusts herself, unexpected and unattended, into a +man's house at dead of night! The name of a woman the innocence of +whose errand is effectually denied by her precipitate flight and her +craven hiding!" + +Echo sank back into her seat, breathless. She listened to the brief, +conventional charge, saw the jurors file out, heard the stir and +movement of relaxation sweep over the room, yet she was unconscious of +the lapse of time. The public, open declaration had seemed to set the +final flaming seal upon the incident, voicing, as if with a monster +siren, the shameful meaning! She had cringed at Mrs. Moncure's smiling +innuendo; now the scathing indictment was burning itself on her brain. +"_A woman who thrusts herself unexpected and unattended into a man's +house at dead of night!_"--the words seemed to stab her over and over +like poisoned daggers. She was that--that woman! She imagined herself +rising in that suffocating room and saying distinctly, "It is I he said +that of--I, Echo Allen!" She saw herself on the witness-stand, heckled +and badgered, faltering an unbelievable story to sceptical ears. There +was rolling over her an overwhelming dread, and her hands had clenched +till the nails struck purple crescents into her palms. + +She became aware suddenly that the room had hushed, the jury was +re-entering. She hardly heard the foreman's crisp "Guilty, your +Honour!" She was trembling, there was a scent in her nostrils like the +fumes of poppies, and the room seemed to be swaying to and fro. She +turned away her head, daring to look no longer. + +"Prisoner at the bar, stand up!"--the clerk's metallic admonition +seemed to come from far away. She strove to look now, but a swimming +dizziness was upon her and the shadows of the room were turning black. +She had never fainted in her life, and the thought of fainting now +filled her with terror. She rose to her feet, fighting back the +sickness with all her strength, stepped into the aisle, and in a moment +more the fresh outer air, sweet and reviving, struck her quivering face. + +Her going had made no stir, had been unnoted, perhaps, by a dozen in +the court-room. She could not guess that in the instant she had risen, +with blank eyes and unsteady feet, the prisoner at the bar had +half-turned and for a breath his gaze had fastened upon her face. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI + +THE HAUNTER OF THE SHADOW + +But for the iron control to which he had schooled himself, Sevier, in +that second, must have made a panic movement of betrayal. He dragged +his eyes away instantly, his heart beating as if it must burst, as the +deliberate judicial accents struck across the courtroom: + +"I have no desire to say anything to add to your anxiety of mind. The +rulings of the court, if they have had any bias, have not leaned to the +side of the Commonwealth. There is no legal right that has not been +afforded you and if you have not chosen to meet the evidence with +candour it is to be presumed that it is because candour could have lent +no degree of mitigation to the circumstances. The jury has found you +guilty as charged, and I should be doing less than my duty, if I +allowed sympathy based upon imagined facts to subtract from the full +legal penalty. The judgment of this court is, therefore, that you be +imprisoned in the state's penitentiary during a period of twenty years." + +Harry hardly heard the pronouncement for the mental confusion that held +him. Echo knew! All the time while he had been fighting back +recognition, she had known! How had she guessed? Had his voice, +perhaps, that night when he had saved her, betrayed him? He remembered +her white and agonised look when he had thrust her from the door of +Craig's house and bade her run. A doubt, coupled with his absence from +home, would have driven her, somehow or other, to discover the truth. +She had been near him often, perhaps, realising the situation, +conscious of what he had been striving for, knowing that only silence +for a time could save them both! In that instant's view he had seen +the look of suffering and sickness in her face. In these long +weeks--if, indeed, she had known it so long--what an anguish of anxiety +she must have been enduring! + +As the voice ceased and he sat down, through the warm wave that was +coursing over him, Harry felt a chilling realisation of the risk she +had run in coming there. An impulsive word, an indiscreet look, and +suspicion might have been roused leading to discovery. Sitting before +this bar he was only an unknown criminal, a submerged "John Doe" on +whom the make-shift expediency of the law spent itself. But the veil +once lifted, he would be Harry Sevier, club-man and lawyer whose +pleading folk had once flocked to hear, now caught in the vise of the +law and proven thief and degenerate. + +In the emptying room he felt the cool hand of his counsel touch his +own, and followed him--with a watchful deputy-sheriff now in +hand-reach--to a side door that opened into a chamber at the rear of +the court-room. On the threshold the lawyer turned to the sheriff. + +"There's no hurry, Jerry," he said peevishly. "You wait out here a few +minutes. The old man himself is coming. He wants to see him." + +"Mr. Mason," said Sevier as the other closed the door. "I shall not +pretend to thank you for your interest and kindness." + +The man of briefs shrugged his shoulders. "There's nothing to thank me +for," he answered briskly. "Now, if I had cleared you--" + +Harry nodded. "Naturally, you couldn't do that. You were at a +disadvantage." + +"Thanks to you!" + +"Yes, I didn't assist you much, I know." + +"Didn't help me at all," came back in a growl. + +"No doubt you think I might have," said Harry. "But please don't count +me unresponsive. It is only that the logic of the situation appealed +to me as unanswerable. But it is a privilege," he added, with the +glimmer of a smile, "to have been associated with you." + +Mason looked at him with a twist to his saturnine lips. "You have been +my most remarkable client," he said. "It would have pleased me to have +gotten you off. But unluckily for you, I'm no Harry Sevier." + +It was fortunate that the face of the man beside him was turned away, +or he might have seen it go white and startled. "I'm sure I lost no +chance I might have had," said the other slowly, "even though you're +not Harry Sevier, whoever he is." + +The other laughed shortly. "He's a lawyer in the next state. I heard +him plead once. _He_ didn't bother with evidence! He'd clear Judas +Iscariot with that silver tongue of his! Ah, well..." He shrugged his +shoulders again, and turned to a closed door. "I'll see if the old man +is ready." + +"One moment." Harry had drawn the ring with the square uncut emerald +from his finger, and now he held it out. "I should consider it a +favour, if you would take this--it has no particular value, I am sorry +to say--as a little remembrance." + +Mason turned the ring over in his hands. Under the churlish pose a +guilty flush stole up his lean, eccentric face that betrayed +unmistakably the friendliness and liking he had learned for the man +whose plight angered and whose attitude puzzled him. "Thank you!" he +said, and a sudden smile made the grim demeanour all at once soft and +human. He slipped it on his finger. "Thank you! I shall be proud to +keep it." + +He opened the door and Sevier followed him into the room adjoining. + +There, looking out of the window, the fingers of one thin hand in his +plenteous blue-grey beard, the other behind him, stood the Governor of +the State. Harry felt a thrill run through him. He knew the older man +by sight, for they had met once casually in the past. Had Echo already +spoken? Did the other know? + +"Governor," said the lawyer, "I beg to present my client, whose cause I +have so poorly represented." + +In the deep grey, kindly eyes that were studying him attentively, Harry +saw instantly, however, that there was no hidden knowledge, and his +heart, that had leaped quickly, dropped into measured beating. He +bowed. + +"My counsel did wonders," he said, "but the day of miracles is past." + +The reply was simple enough, but the visitor unconsciously looked his +surprise. He had been prepared for something in a way unusual, for +Mason had employed his intimacy to inspire something of his own keen +interest in his client. Face to face with the latter, the Governor +understood the lawyer's puzzlement. Here was a man who had been +arrested as a house-breaker and who, caught in the very act, had shot a +man down. Yet he found it suddenly credible, as Mason had declared, +that the man was no ordinary burglar, was indeed, or had been, a +gentleman. But there were gentlemen-thieves! He met Harry's tone with +noncommittal courtesy. + +"You will not consider this an intrusion, I hope," he said. "My friend +here was anxious that I should see you. He has been deeply concerned +in your case." + +"It is a pleasure," Harry replied simply. "He has been put to +considerable pains, in which there is very little credit, I am afraid." + +"His interest," the Governor went on, "as he has assured me, arises +from a conviction that there is some hidden element in the affair that, +if it had been brought out, might have put a different face upon it." + +Harry bowed but did not answer. + +"You have a good reason, I take it, for maintaining the silence as to +yourself which my friend here finds so difficult?" + +"The very best," said Harry grimly. + +The Governor mused a moment. "You will pardon me, I am sure, if I ask +you one other question. Have you ever been in prison?" + +"No," said Harry. + +"Have you committed crime--in the past?" + +"As the law counts it, no." + +He looked the Governor steadily in the eyes as he spoke and the other, +a keen judge of men, with a knowledge, bred of long life and +observation, of the workings of the human conscience, felt a strange +inclination to believe. Yet for every criminal there must be a first +crime. Given a good family name and the remnant of a conscience, the +man's insistence could be accounted for! With a little sigh he turned +to Mason. + +"Shall I see you at the Castlemans to-night?" he asked as they shook +hands. + +"I'm dining at the Langhams," Mason replied. "It's a farewell dinner +for Miss Allen." + +"A charming girl, Echo!" said the Governor. "I've known her since she +was a child. A farewell, did you say? Is her visit over?" + +"Yes, she's off to Europe to-morrow." + +The lawyer went with the Governor to the door and stood a moment +looking after him as he crossed the lawn to his carriage. He did not +see the look that had suddenly slipped to the face of the man standing +behind him--a look mingled of sudden wonder and questioning disquiet. + +To Europe! Echo? Was she going away now ... knowing it all ... +knowing what he had passed through, what lay before him? Going without +written word or secret sign to him? + +Harry felt a strange sinking of the heart. It seemed to him as if a +cold shadow had suddenly fallen across the room--a shadow in which +lurked something vague and formless, something whose existence his +faith denied, yet which stood silently staring at him with a cruel and +terrifying smile. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII + +THE END OF THE JOURNEY + +Some miles beyond the skirt of the city, on the dusty highway, stood a +vast wall of stone built four-square, along whose top, seen +breast-high, men in dingy _khaki_ patrolled back and forth with rifles +on their shoulders. Fronting the road was a great barred gate, with an +arched top, set in the wall. This opened on a narrow paved court at +one side of which was a two storied frame building, whose door was +marked with the word "warden." + +Before this door the next afternoon Harry Sevier stood with a sheriff. +The latter knocked and a heavy-featured man came out. "Well, Warden," +said the sheriff, "I've brought you another boarder. Here's his +papers." + +The other examined the documents, took a fountain-pen from his pocket +and signed one--a form of receipt--and handed it back. "All right," he +said briefly, and rushing open the door, motioned the new arrival to +enter. + +When Harry emerged, an hour later, under the care of a uniformed +turn-key, he wore trousers and jacket of coarse fulled cloth with +horizontal stripes of black and yellowish-grey--the badge of the +convict. Under his visored cap his crisp black hair had been clipped +close to the skin. And in the upper office a trusty who acted as clerk +was filling in on an indexed card the physical measurements which, with +the number he wore on a leathern strap about his upper arm, constituted +the formula by which hereafter was to be known the man who had once +been Harry Sevier. + +In the centre of the great walled space reared an ancient circular +structure of brick. It was like a huge bee-hive. His conductor led +Harry to a compartment on the lower tier and unlocked an iron door. +"This is yours, 239," he said. + +Harry entered. He heard the door clang behind him and the footsteps +retire down the stone corridor. The light from a barred window struck +full into his eyes and for a moment he did not see that another figure, +in the same dingy stripes, sat on the edge of the narrow bunk, looking +at him out of small, red-rimmed eyes. + +The occupant rose slowly, thrusting a grimy hand through a shock of +sand-coloured hair, and stared hard at the newcomer. Then he uttered a +howl of evil mirth and recognition. + +"Smoke of the devil!" he shouted. "If it ain't the youngster me and +Towler had behind the portiary! Ho-ho! I saw by the papers they'd +nabbed you. And to think the geezer swore it was you that plugged him! +They didn't get me--not that time! I'd be out still if I hadn't tried +to lift a reticule on a street-car. It was my record that did it for +me then. Well, we're pals now, old horse, and we'll celebrate it +right!" + +He thrust his arm beneath the rough blanket, brought out a flask, and +uncorked it with his teeth. + +"It's the real stuff," he said. "Towler slips it to me--good old pal! +He's got one of the guards 'fixed'! Here--drink hearty!" With a +hoarse laugh he thrust it into Harry's face. + +Harry's eyes had been fixed on his with a curious intensity. In that +startling moment, as the fumes of the liquor penetrated his nostrils, a +lurid sequence had flashed to him. This man he had once betrayed by a +base surrender to appetite; now in antic irony, it was this man's crime +that had betrayed him, Harry Sevier, to the same dilemma and a like +shameful penalty. And here was dangled before him the hideous badge +and symbol of his downfall! + +He seized the wrist of the outstretched hand with a grasp like steel, +and the flask smashed against the bars of the window. Then he hurled +the other from him across the narrow cell. + +His cell-mate clung to the bunk across which he had fallen, and stared +at Harry with a look of slow malevolence. He licked his lips. + +"I'll fix you for that!" he said. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII + +THE MAN IN THE WHEELED CHAIR + +Echo sat under the Botticelli blue of a perfect afternoon on the +terrace of the Hotel Splendid in Nice. Through the hot, bright air, +set in the purple creases of the hazeless hills, she could see tinted +villas drowsing in golden gardens aflame with flowers, and below under +the dizzying sunlight beyond the long esplanade, tiny swells spilled +over the pearly beech like molten sapphire. + +The past months had been packed with new sights and sounds. There had +been the ocean passage, with all the gaiety that mill-pond weather and +a total absence of _mal de mer_ evokes, a leisurely motor trip through +the northern counties of England, shopping and theatre-going in Paris, +and then a final fortnight on the Riviera. From the first day at sea, +when the dimming shores of home had slipped away into the vaporous +distance across the swinging, grey-green heave, Echo had thrown herself +eagerly into the new experiences. It had seemed to her at first as +though she was leaving behind all her pain and problem and flying +whither the dogging ghosts could not follow. From time to time she +felt a wave of that shame that had overwhelmed her as she sat in the +court-room. When she reflected, she felt astonishment at her own +temerity--at the morbid curiosity which had impelled her to witness the +rehearsal of an episode whose very memory thrilled her with pain and +dread. But at length this, too, had faded. She had told herself that +Harry would have returned before her and that all would again be well +between them. With all her power she had striven to thrust the pain +and apprehension from the mind and amid new and varying scenes she had +partially succeeded. + +But though the acute strain and distress, the piteous terror had +dulled, her heart ached always with its burden, and there were many +times when all of Mrs. Spottiswoode's effervescent moods could not call +forth response. Across the fairest scenes the ghosts, uncalled, would +thrust themselves, and in her brain a mocking voice would whisper-- + +"You will never tell him! You will never dare! There will always be a +secret between you! You will be deceiving him--all your life. For if +you told him the truth--the whole truth--would he believe you? The +letters for which you made that visit, even if you could show them, are +ashes now. And even if he believed in the necessity that drove you to +win them from Craig, what might he imagine had been the price! You +know what the world would think: you heard it in the court-room. He +would think the same thing! You were in Craig's house, alone, that +midnight--and you will never dare tell him! Can you say to him, 'It +was _I_ who was in Cameron Craig's library! _I_ was the mysterious +woman the police were searching for--_I_ whom you love!'?" + +The sneering voices were whispering in her ear to-night, as she sat +looking out across the blended harmonies of sky and sea, her wistful +face bent beneath the soft halo of her hair. + +There welled up in her with fresh force the aching resentment, the sick +anger and rebellion against the sardonic fate that had so enmeshed her. +Why should Craig have ever seen and desired her? Why should his fancy +not have fallen upon some other woman? Yet, had that been so, her +father's name would have been ruined! That, at least, had not +befallen. If only she had not written that note to Harry! So she +reflected, not knowing that that fateful note itself had been the key +to another series of incidents which had in fact wrought for her +salvation--so curiously interwoven is the mystic fabric that man calls +chance. By that note, she told herself, she had thrust his love from +her. Would anything less than the whole truth bring it back? And in +any case, if she did not tell him the whole, would she ever be safe in +that love? For Craig could betray her if he regained his faculties. A +single word could overwhelm her. There was that lost night when she +had been believed to be at her aunt's--a dropped stitch in time's weave +which might unravel the whole! If he recovered Craig would hold her +happiness in his grasp as surely as he had once held her father's +honour. + +The cogent reasons that had influenced Harry in his speculation on the +same subject had been based on his keen masculine observation and +familiarity with Craig's type; Echo had only her knowledge of his +relentless passion and lack of scruple, and her instinct was clouded by +long anxiety and fear. She had lately striven to banish from her mind +the idea that he might recover, but to-night it was upon her with +strange force. A baleful thought thrust itself into her mind, an +incarnate temptation: _If Craig would only die_! As it came to her she +felt her face blush, and she shrank, feeling that a wicked thing had +found lodgment in her soul; but it came again and again. + +A little group of people who had arrived that morning had issued from +the dining-room and now were seated about one of the small tables on +the terrace drinking their coffee--two men, one elderly, one younger, a +handsome woman and a girl. They continued the conversation begun +inside--evidently a discussion of some one who had been on the train. +All at once the lady touched the speaker beside her on the arm. + +"Hush!" she cautioned. "There he is now!" + +The voices stilled. Glancing around Echo saw that a wheeled-chair was +being pushed onto the far end of the terrace. A man sat in it, huddled +in a steamer-rug. + +"Is he married?" asked the lady, after a pause. + +"No," replied the elderly man. "He has no family or near relatives. +The men with him are a nurse and a secretary. They say he is very +rich." + +"Poor fellow!" she exclaimed. "What a dreadful thing! Death is +immensely preferable, of course, to life under such conditions. Where +are they taking him?" + +"To Hungary, I believe. There's a celebrated authority on +brain-surgery in Buda-Pesth. The surgeons think it's pressure on some +nerve-centre, and the case calls for the particular operation that is +this chap's specialty. It's a forlorn hope, I imagine." + +"I don't know," said the younger man, lighting a cigarette. "They do +marvellous things nowadays. And anyway, if it fails, it can't be any +worse for the patient. As it is, he has no mind at all--no speech, no +memory, nothing!" + +Echo turned her head; there was a fierce little smile on her lips. So +here was another! Had he, too, like the one of whom she had been +thinking, been overtaken by a righteous Nemesis in the moment of evil +triumph? And somewhere, perhaps, was there a woman to whom his death +would be a gladness and a relief? + +The lady looked toward the wheeled-chair. "How was the injury caused?" +she asked interestedly. + +"He was shot," said the elderly man. "Shot by a burglar. I remember +reading of it in the newspapers at the time." + +Echo started. A little tremor ran over her. The scarf she held +slipped from her hand. + +"It seems a pity sometimes," went on the voice, "that the law must +graduate its penalties so nicely. Here is a man who, to all intents +and purposes, was murdered. If he doesn't recover, his is a living +death. Yet because he continues to breathe, the most that can be given +to the scoundrel who shot him is a term of imprisonment. He ought to +have been hanged!" + +The girl beside her pushed back her chair petulantly. "Oh, let's _do_ +something!" she cried. "I want to get him out of my mind. I sat where +I had to look at him in the train all day. It's too horrible! Fancy +having to be like that, not being able to walk or talk or even to feed +one's self! I want to go to the Casino and see something _funny_!" + + +When the sound of their voices had died away in the corridor, Echo rose +from her seat and walked along the terrace, quite to the end, where +stood the wheeled-chair. On a bench near by an attendant was immersed +in a newspaper. + +Then she turned and looked at the pallid, vacuous face above the +steamer-rug. + +Yes--it was Cameron Craig. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX + +THE LONE BATTLE + +During those months Harry's visible life had been turning in an endless +cycle of new-gained habit that ruled with vicious and numbing precision +the huge conglomerate of which he was but a single atom--a bitter, +dragging treadmill in which he was constrained to tramp steadily round +and round with the hands of the clock, marking time, as it were, in a +painful void that changed with mocking reverberations. + +The spectre that had smiled its cruel smile at him from the shadow in +the little chamber back of the court-room had never left him. He had +thrust it from him with all his strength, but it had come again and +again to chuckle through the darkness. + +"She!" it had sneered. "She for whom you risked and suffered so much! +She whose fine courage you counted on--who you dreamed would rush to +your defence, at any cost to herself! You need not have been afraid. +She would have risked nothing. She cared for you--yes. But she cares +a thousand times more for her place in the world's opinion. Why, she +would have married Craig--_married_ him!--rather than face a reflected +shame from a story affecting her father. So much reputation means to +her! Here you are in your stripes, a convict, and _she knows it_! She +knew all along! She doesn't guess you saw her in the court-room: she +didn't mean you to, of course. How she must have suffered from fear +that you would drag her into it! No doubt she is afraid you may repent +and call on her now to help you. Perhaps that is why she has gone +abroad. That is the real Echo Allen! That is the woman you have +loved!" + +Should he call to her now, when she had left him to this suffering, +giving him no little word of trust or gratitude? A painful fiery pride +rose up in him. Not if his flesh was torn by red-hot pincers! Not in +endless years, though every day were a separate hell, till he died! +Never--never--never! + +Seared by pride, tortured by despair, with the black agony of doubt +clinging to him like a coat-of-mail, memory dragged him backward +through infernos of suffering, thrusting its searching fingers into +each cranny of his mind, mocking him with shifting pictures cruelly +incongruous, that like a _camera obscura_ turned and turned about a +single focus--a grey old porch with Echo's figure leaning against a +pillar and he looking up into her face. As though he had been a +separate entity he saw himself moving through a thousand significant +scenes of the flame-swept past--the long-gone, dead and buried yet +living past--with her! And across these flitting outlines there +stamped itself the forbidding legend that his ghostly guide showed +Dante.... _Lasciate Ogni speranza_! By his own choice he had opened a +bottomless chasm between the then and now, between the Harry Sevier he +had been and the nameless convict branded by the righteous law, and +this chasm was impassible and enduring. Ten years of oblivion, of +loathsome existence under a number, of comradeship with felons, an +interminable blank unlighted by one glimpse of joy! Years in which, at +home, the mystery of his disappearance would pass from a +nine-days'-wonder to a diminishing speculation, a vague curiosity, and +at length to forgetfulness. His life, with its multiple ambitions, its +hopes and strivings--its love--had been spilled like water into sand; +there remained only the useless vessel, empty and dishonoured. + +Time and again he experienced abrupt lapses into the blackest pit of +despair, when he grappled with an aching desire to be quit of the +puzzle of life, and by any one of a dozen means which lay at his hand, +to leap into freedom. But there was in him something deep-lying and +adamantine which forbade this solution. + +Meanwhile time, after a fashion, went on. He breathed, ate and slept; +he saw the dawn look in at his narrow window and the silken blue dusk +drawn across its bars; his hands automatically performed mechanical +tasks, as did the hundreds of others about him; and gradually, out of +the very iteration of these homely things grew a passive equanimity, +destitute of human comfort yet bringing with it a kind of numb +acquiescence in which, though all unconsciously, his feet were feeling +for new foot-hold on the submerged highway of life. And at length +normal feeling, though dazed and bewildered, crept again to the +surface; he was once more conscious of the sun and air, of the scent of +green growing things that the breeze now and then wafted over the +masonry, of the grey pigeons that pecked crumbs in the court-yard, and +of the multitudinous human life that throbbed about him. + +In all these months Paddy the Brick had been his cell-mate. By day in +the shop, that rumbled with the clacking din of the tireless +shoe-machines, they were separated. But they marched shoulder to +breast in the loathed lock-step, they sat side by side at dinner and +supper, and the iron bunks on which they slept--Harry on the upper +one--were but a few feet apart. During the first days, while they were +together in the cell, the other had watched him glumly and +suspiciously, speaking only when he must and then morosely, so that +Harry had wondered dully whether that whirl of rage in which he had +smashed the flask of whisky against the window-bars had not further +embittered his lot by an irreparable enmity. + +More than once, by the devious means known to such places, Paddy the +Brick had procured whisky, and this--though he risked offering no more +to his companion but drank it secretly in his bunk at night--had put +Harry through other bitter tests of self-control. For the wilful +license of the day on which he had ceased to be Harry Sevier had +granted fresh and terrible power to the cringing thing that had been +mastered and manacled, and the fight he had fought out in that long +year Harry had had again to renew, and now without the zest of reward. +Again and again, as he sat in his cell, or fed the pungent leathern +strips into the clacking shoe-machines in the shop, without warning the +demon of thirst had swooped upon him, making his dry throat ache with +uncontrollable longing, his palms tingle with itching desire: and at +times, when he awoke gasping with the reeking fumes in his nostrils, +and heard the gurgle of the liquor in the dark, he had fought with a +strenuous desire to fling himself bodily upon his companion and snatch +the drink to his own arid lips--fought till the struggle turned him +faint with anger, disgust and self-contempt. + +What lent him in these bitter months the strength for this unequal +struggle? Most of all the knowledge that the appetite which he now +grappled with in himself, was the patron Genius of that house of Pain. +He had learned it from his fellows there, in whose faces alcohol had +set its recognisable marks, its baleful brands of ownership. He knew +it from a score of dismal histories related by his incorrigible +cell-mate, daily allusions, the famished eagerness with which the +surreptitious flask was passed from hand to hand. The Spirit of Drink +had seemed to him at length to sprawl, a huge, lethargic incubus, over +that tortured congeries of crime. Till slowly, very slowly--as human +feeling had earlier come to him out of his blankness and torpor--there +had dawned in him a mute consciousness of a victory over himself that +was to be enduring. The conquest he had thought he had made in that +first year of studied avoidance had been no true one. Under stress of +anger, grief and resentment, it had fallen in shameful and utter +defeat. The real victory that he knew now, had come to him in that +prison garb, when black despair had sat by his side through long +months--the fruit of a strength born of familiar hand-touch with evil +temptation and a hatred of the tempter. + +As time went on, the surly mood of his cell-mate had grown less +difficult, had even softened to a sneering tolerance. + +"You're improving!" he said one day with a smirk. "So you're making up +to the Gospel-Sharp, eh?" + +It was a Sunday, when the shops were empty and silent, and the long +grey-black serpentine, with its hitching lock-step, had wound to the +Chapel for the weekly platitudes and then back to the clammy, wintry +dormitory, to drop its human links at their numbered cells. That day +for the first time, the plodding, oleaginous chaplain had noted the new +figure in the stolid ranks and had stopped to speak to him--a +commonplace to which Harry had responded with a mere word. + +"You'd better make up to the Warden!" Paddy the Brick continued. "He's +the cock-of-the-walk here. I'd like to smash that oily face of his!" + +"I've nothing against him," replied Harry evenly. "He does what he's +here to do." + +"He'd better keep his nose in his office," said the other darkly. +"He'll walk through the shops once too often! I know a man around the +corner who'd give his neck to 'get' him--he's a lifer, and nothing +makes much difference to him!" + +He crossed the narrow cell as he spoke, and sitting on one of the +three-legged stools that constituted the cell's only movable furniture, +took a bent tin spoon from under his jacket and began to tap upon the +wall. Harry had sometimes seen him at this occupation--a kind of crude +signalling he had thought it. Now, however, some rhythm in the sound +caught him, reminding him of the click of the keys in a telegraph +office. "What is that you are doing?" he asked, as the other stopped. + +"Doing?" Paddy the Brick turned his narrow eyes over his shoulder. +"I've been having a chat with an old pal of mine in the upper tier. +That's what." + +"Talking?" + +"Yes. It's the prison-wireless. Didn't you ever hear of that?" + +"No." + +The other rose and pulled away the blanket from the foot of his bunk. +There in the whitewashed wall was a double row of minute scratches. +"That's the alphabet," he said. "It's mighty handy--we work it by +relay. I can call up any cell on this side in fifteen minutes. Better +learn it," he added jeeringly. "You'll have plenty of time!" + +Harry's gaze turned back to the little barred window with its meagre +square of blue. The time he had been there was to be measured only by +months, yet how century-long had dragged the leaden-footed procession! +His painful reverie was broken by Paddy the Brick's voice, jarring and +malicious: + +"Ever read the Bible?" + +The other had taken the small dingy volume--the sole book the place +afforded--from its shelf, and was lying on his back on his bunk, his +eyes peering over its rim. + +"Yes," answered Harry, slowly. "Why?" + +"I've found one good thing in it: '_Woe unto you also, ye lawyers! for +ye lade men with burdens grievous to be borne._' Ho-ho!" he chuckled. +"Reckon I'll ask old Coffin-Face to preach on it next Sunday in Chapel. +I'd sure enjoy it. I had a lawyer once--_damn_ him!" + +The flare of evil passion in the closing epithet seemed to Harry like a +wicked spurt of flame from some sudden crack in cooling lava, leaping +out to sear him. His face was turned away--toward the little square of +barred window--and his voice was hoarser than usual, as he asked: + +"Why do you hate him so?" + +Paddy the Brick hurled the Bible into the corner with an imprecation. +He rose to a sitting posture, his features working. + +"Because he did it for me!" he said. "He might have cleared me ... and +he didn't try. And I never took the money they said I stole--never, so +help me! It was a put-up job. They 'planted' the stuff on me, when I +was drunk. It was a pay-day and I knew they were up to something, for +they'd sworn they'd drive me out of the logging-camp--and yet I hadn't +sense enough to keep sober!" He gave a harsh and bitter laugh, and his +voice rose. "But it was my lawyer friend that really did the business! +He was a dead swell--one of your la-de-das with money and +automobiles--that played at lawyering. They told me he was a great man +and I was fool enough to believe them. What did he care for my +case--it was a little one to him! I was nothing but a lumberjack! Why +should he soil his kid gloves with me?" + +He turned to Harry's white face a livid countenance. "So now I'm +here," he finished, "and I don't give a rip if I am, either!" + +"_Woe unto you also, ye lawyers!_" Parallel with the wholesale +indictment another text in that self-same book was flashing through +Harry's mind: "_For with what judgment ye judge ye shall be judged, and +with what measure ye mete it shall be measured to you again._" Was +that, after all, no trite generality applicable to a hypothetical +hereafter, but a thing true in the minute and multinomial affairs of +the present? Did chance, or fate--or whatever the human mind called +the great _Deus ex Machina_--watch somewhere, with hand upon the lever, +adjusting the nice balance to the subtle requirements of some occult +law of retribution that, though hidden, was yet as certain as +gravitation? + +As Harry saw the reddened eyes glowing with hatred, the curving +fingers, the crouching figure, he said to himself, "This is my +work--mine and whisky's. He was a simple woodman who laboured six days +of the week and on the seventh traded half his wages for 'moonshine' +from some illicit mountain still. Whisky set his feet in the toils, +yet but for me he might have lived there forever in the timber, +treading his narrow groove like a blind horse on a ferry, not one whit +worse than his fellows, with no agonised conscience, a simple product +of his environment. But I--and whisky--fastened the bonds upon him. I +did it. I sent him here. I gave him hatred of society, the warfare +that has already marked him with the mark of the beast. This is what I +did. And now I am plucked up from my place and planted here beside +him, as soiled in the eyes of the world as he! Is it because I was the +instrument of his demoralisation that the tables have now been +turned?--because he who takes the sword shall perish by the sword? And +in the last great evening-up, is it written that I shall become even as +he?--that bars and chains shall have their will of me and I emerge at +last, like this incorrigible _ruine_, hard, debased, besotted, beyond +hope or redemption in the world?" He shuddered. Better even that that +shot in the library had gone home--that he now lay, innocent as he was, +with the red mark on his throat, down in the horrible quick-lime! + +He rose, and with his hands gripping the bars of the open door, drew a +long breath. No! whatever this pent-house did to him, it should never +drag him down! He would take his medicine. For what, in his egregious +folly and egotism, he had done, he would pay--if fate demanded, to the +uttermost farthing. But out of its prison his soul, sometime, should +come unblanched, and unabashed! + + + + +CHAPTER XXX + +THE GIPSY RING + +The chill touch of autumn was in the air when the big steamer that +brought Mrs. Spottiswoode and Echo home, crept up the bay to her wharf +in the teeming North River. They arrived at daylight and the early +morning found them safe aboard a Pullman rolling southward. + +Looking out across the filmy glory of the October fields and the woods +in their golden regalia epauletted in red, Echo thought of the day she +had sailed away. She had been wretched then, and with all the tonic of +fresh scenes and the savour of change, was she not as wretched now? +For no letter from home had chronicled Harry Sevier's return, and +moreover the knowledge that Craig had been taken half around the world +to test the greatest surgical skill the planet afforded, had made his +recovery, with all it might imply for her, an imminent possibility. + +As she followed Mrs. Spottiswoode into the dining-car for luncheon, a +lank, familiar form sprang up from a table. + +"Mr. Malcolm!" she cried, and found both her hands instantly swallowed +in a pair of big palms. + +He was an extraordinary man, this Thomas Malcolm, whom his intimates +dubbed, affectionately, "Tom." His father had begun life brilliantly, +had begun to make a name and place for himself in professional life, +when he had yielded to the vice of drinking, had speedily sunk himself +in poverty, and had died in some slum corner wretched and unredeemed, +leaving behind him a widow and a boy of ten who, with grim +determination, had set himself to earn a living for both. He had but +just begun to succeed in this when disease, its seeds sown in +privation, took his mother from him. By dint of night-work he had +gained a common-school education and had tutored himself through a +southern university. At twenty-five he had founded an obscure Mission +in the city which had known his father's disgrace, where for thirty +years he had devoted himself to work among the rum-sodden and depraved. +There was none so besotted as to be turned from his door; he was a +familiar figure in the night-court and a welcome weekly visitor at the +Penitentiary, few of whose inmates he did not know personally. At +fifty-five no man was more beloved in the community in which he +laboured, and most of all was he valued and respected by those who knew +his history, and understood how the hatred of liquor had become to the +boy a consuming fire that had driven him to this life of undeviating +self-denial and strenuous conflict with the most sordid of vices. + +Looking down at Echo from his great height, gaunt, raw-boned and with a +saturnine twinkle in his cavernous eyes, his homely sallow face +softened to a wonderful smile. "Why!" he said. "It's a monstrous time +since we've met, my dear!" and to Mrs. Spottiswoode--"I saw your names +on the passenger-list in the paper this morning, but I thought New York +would have kept you at least a week." + +"Not me!" she returned. "We took in all the new plays in London and +spent all our money in Paris. I've no ambition now above my winter +roses!" She extended her hand to Malcolm's companion. + +"How do you do, Mr. Mason? I'm beginning to think you two men are +desperate conspirators. Last year in New York I saw you both together." + +Malcolm laughed. "A misguided philanthropist once left a part of his +estate to my Mission, and Mason, here, is the legal executor. _Ferbum +sat_." + +"I hope that is Latin for 'Do sit at our table.' The car is so full, +and I never could ride backward! Thank you, so much!" She sat down +and bent her smart lorgnette upon the menu-card. "What shall we order, +Echo?" + +"Anything but the 'fried Chicken, Virginia style,'" said Mason +gloomily. "It's supposed to be what that waiter has on his tray there. +It's a crime and a swindle." + +"Don't mind Mason," interposed Malcolm. "He's a dyspeptic. When I get +to be his age--" + +"You did," said the other viciously, "five years ago." + +"--I'll be a vegetarian," finished the other. "Cheer up, Mason, and +have a potato." He turned to Echo: "I know a girl in my town who's +mighty keen to see you." + +"Nancy Langham!" + +He nodded. "She counts on having you down for Thanksgiving week. I +hope she'll succeed. I'm giving a great 'spread' down at the Mission, +and I want you girls to show me how to decorate the place. You will, +then, eh? I haven't forgotten how you and Nancy helped me out last +Christmas!" He reached over and patted her hand. "I do like to let it +soak into Poverty Terrace that I really keep company with 'dee +quality,' as the darkies say!" + +Mrs. Spottiswoode looked at him curiously. "How frivolous and selfish +we must all seem to you, who give up your life to such people!" she +said. "I've heard so much about your work, Mr. Malcolm, especially in +the prisons. I think you are wonderful. I should know how to talk to +a Martian better than to a criminal. Don't you find it hard to get +into sympathy with them?" + +His smiling face turned serious. "'A fellow-feeling makes us wondrous +kind,'" he quoted. "You remember your Bunyan? I always say to myself, +'There, but for the lack of a sufficient temptation, goes Thomas +Malcolm!' Dear Lady, there is many a man in the Penitentiary who would +be a churchwarden to-day but for bad environment and good whisky." + +"And the law's mistakes," added Mason, sardonically. He had been +turning over on his finger a ring with a square green stone, and Echo +had been wondering vaguely where she had seen such a ring before. "I +know a man who's in for ten years, and I'd stake my life he's no more +guilty than I am." + +"How extraordinary!" exclaimed Mrs. Spottiswoode, and Malcolm observed +with wicked innocence: "I wonder who could have defended him!" + +The other smiled grimly at the thrust. "Oh, he was guilty enough +according to the evidence. But he was innocent, for all of that. He +is the man who was accused of shooting Cameron Craig." + +The blood flew to Echo's face and she bent her head over her salad. +She felt as though she had strayed unwittingly into an ambush where all +the old dread and terror from which she had fled had sprung again upon +her. + +"But," said Mrs. Spottiswoode, "I thought Craig himself identified him." + +Mason sniffed. "Craig was in no condition to identify anybody. I saw +the man and talked with him, day after day, for weeks. He was no +criminal--why, his very look gave the theory the lie!" + +A keen, thriving wonder crossed Echo's thought at the blunt assertion. +That livid face back of the spitting revolver hung before her mental +sight with strange vividness--the surly, wicked lips, the low brow and +narrow eyes. How was it possible that such a countenance could assume +at wont a look of innocency that would deceive a lawyer, even against +damning evidence, into a belief that he was a victim of circumstances? + +"What is your theory of the shooting, then?" asked Mrs. Spottiswoode, +interestedly. + +The lawyer was silent a moment, drawing little circles on the cloth +with his fork. "I haven't a wholly satisfactory one," he said at +length, slowly. "But I don't believe he did it. Craig, it is certain, +had a _rendezvous_ with a woman, and the woman saw the shooting. I +believe her testimony would have proven that the man who was tried and +convicted was not the man who did it. That fact disposed of, I believe +he could have shown, if he had chosen to, that he had no connection +with the burglars, and would have been acquitted." + +"_Cherchez la femme!_" murmured the lady. + +"Yes. She would not come forward." + +Mrs. Spottiswoode looked at Malcolm. "Have you seen him?" she asked. + +"No, I've been in New Orleans for three months. But I hope to begin my +visits at the Penitentiary very soon, and I'm looking forward to +meeting him." + +"You'll agree with me, I'll bet a hat!" said Mason. "By the way"--he +held up his hand--"he gave me this ring, the day he was sentenced." + +Echo felt every nerve suddenly tighten. For it had come to her in a +flash where she had seen that ring's counterpart: it had been on the +finger of the masked burglar on that horrible midnight in Craig's +library--when he had held out to her the letters from the safe! Her +heart began to beat suffocatingly. "_Take them and go--go +instantly!_"--she seemed to hear the tense command strike across the +car. A thrill ran over her. Was the ring a kind of badge, a sign of +their guilty calling? Or could it be that the man who was being tried +was _not_ the man who had shot Craig--but the other, the one who had +saved her? + +She began to tremble, for another thought stabbed her. If this was so, +how could she honourably keep silence? The instant question touched +her conscience, her quick sense of justice and duty, with sudden +insistence. But for the spoilers themselves, she was the only witness +of that deed in the library. Craig--so narrow had been for him that +instant of observation--might have been mistaken. But not she! The +very fright and horror of the moment had indelibly fixed the shooter's +face upon her mind. Suppose Mason's hypothesis were correct--suppose +he had been no burglar, but an honourable man, caught, as she had been, +in a web of circumstance. In the crisis he had acted as a gentleman, +had thought of her before himself. Instead of flying with the others, +he had lingered to do that generous deed for her. What if it were +because of that he had been taken! If so, what a debt she owed him! + +It came to her suddenly that she must be _certain_. Never again could +she know peace of soul till she knew the truth. If the man in the +Penitentiary was indeed the man who had shot Craig, well and good. If +not... + +She turned her head, for Malcolm was speaking to her. "When you come +to Nancy's you must let me take you both out to see these _proteges_ of +mine that have to be shut up for the good of their souls. Wouldn't you +like to, eh?" + +She thought he must hear the beating of her pulse. "Would--don't they +resent being stared at?" she faltered. + +"Bless your heart!" he said, with one of his bear-like laughs. "It's +good for them. They don't get a squint at roses and sunshine every +day! A sight like you two girls will make them want to get out, and +keep them on their best behaviour, so as to earn all the commutation +good marks bring! I'll get the Warden to take us through the shops. +That's the most interesting part." + + +"I must be quite certain!" The words seemed singing themselves over in +a banal refrain that sounded through the stir and rumble of the +station, mingling with 'Lige's hearty voice of welcome, and her +father's loving greeting as he lifted her carefully from the car step. + +"You're a lot better? _Sure?_" he queried anxiously, as he held both +her hands tight in his. + +"Sure!" she smiled. "We've had a _wonderful_ time. I couldn't begin +to tell you about it in my letters. But I'm glad to be home just the +same! How are mother and Chilly? Mr. Malcolm was on the train--there +he is now, waving his hand from the window. Did the wireless tell you +we lost a propeller-blade two days out?" + +The dusk flowed over them in violet waves as they drove homeward and +she laughed and talked gaily, with her hand clasped in his under the +carriage-robe, the horses prancing and curvetting in the keen October +air. Once, at a crossing, she put out her hand and touched the +coachman's arm. + +"Take Main Street, 'Lige," she directed. "I'd like to see how it +looks." + +As he swung into the broader thoroughfare, her father said, "You're +looking at the new bank building. You see it's nearly done." + +But she was really looking beyond, at a four-storied office-front, on +whose second floor the windows of a suite showed in chaste, golden +letters the legend, "Henry Sevier, Attorney-at-Law." The windows were +blank and dusty, and their blinds were drawn. + +"Why, you're shivering!" said her father suddenly, and drew the robe +more closely about her. + +She smiled at him. + +"No," she said, "but I think I'm just a little tired. Drive faster, +'Lige. I--I want to get home." + + + + +CHAPTER XXXI + +AMBUSH + +Lying in his bunk Harry awoke to the consciousness of another bleak +dawn. The morning waking was always a pain to him, for in sleep the +barriers fell away and the mind fared forth along the free, sweet +highways of memory. He did not open his eyes at once, but he felt the +rasp of the coarse blanket at his throat, smelled the cold clamminess +of the granite floor, and realised by a thousand reminders of the +sharpened senses that another round of the treadmill awaited him. He +remembered drearily that to-morrow would be Thanksgiving Day. In the +world outside it was the time of yellow maples and the red of the +frost-kissed sumac, of wild grapes purpling in the thickets and clumps +of alder blooms in the fence-corners--of blazing hearths and good +fellowship! + +Mingling with the stir of reawakening life in the corridors there +sounded a light _tap-tap_--the tattoo of a tin spoon against the stone. + +Without moving he opened his eyes. Paddy the Brick was up and +dressed--if donning the cheap flannel shirt, the striped jacket and +trousers, might be called dressing--and, stooped in the corner of the +cell, was industriously at work with the 'prison-wireless.' For a +while Harry watched him curiously; then suddenly his ear made out a +word. For in time he had taken his cell-mate's sneering advice, and +because the busy mind, turned too long upon itself, must perforce +occupy itself with something extraneous, had mastered the code that was +scratched in the white-washed wall. He had a retentive memory, +sharpened now by disuse, and the tiny _tap-tap_ that he had learned to +distinguish through the muffling masonry, though he never used it as a +means of communication, had soon become an open book to him. Strange +things he had heard in this manner--furtive, uncouth gossip of that +under-world, which, although much was couched in an unknown _argot_ and +was meaningless to him, had yet served in a way to lighten the +unendurable emptiness. The word he had caught now was "visitors." + +In another moment Harry was listening intently, for the sounds were +spelling something which instinct told him was wickedly suggestive +though he could not guess its purport. "Warden ... to-day," tapped the +signalled code, "--take ... number nine ... machine ... your ... +chance--" + +Whatever else might have been said was blotted by the whirring clang of +the electric gong in the central corridor. Through the great +lamelliform bee-hive it sent its waking clamour, the signal for rising +to the new day's tasks. With the sound Paddy the Brick thrust the +stolen utensil out of sight and shot a stealthy glance at the upper +bunk, but its occupant had apparently just awakened. + +All the ensuing morning, as he rubbed himself down in the plenteous +cold water which the spigot provided, and did his share in the cleaning +of the bare cell--while he sopped his brown bread in the weak breakfast +coffee, and presently tramped in the long file to the shop to feed the +voracious machines with the clean-smelling leather--all the while +Harry's brain was busy with the message he had heard. "Visitors?" +Occasionally visitors had passed through the shops--panging reminders +to him of the world outside. Perhaps in some devious way the other had +heard that some would come to-day. But turn and twist the rest of the +words how he might, they meant nothing. Dinner time came, with its +lifting break in the unvarying monotony, then the long lock-step back +to the shop and its labour. + +The work had come to be far more welcome to him than the cell, with the +partner to whose society he was chained. The hum and click and throb +stole his thought, and the automatic movements, in which he had become +an adept, soothed his aching mind. For several hours this afternoon +the mechanical occupation absorbed him and he worked on, noting little +about him. Then, all at once, as he turned to pick up the bit of +cotton waste with which he kept the steel clutches of the machine +before him free from dust, he became conscious of something +unaccustomed. His own machine was number eight. At the one adjoining, +number nine, which was next to the broad middle way bisecting the shop, +Paddy the Brick was wont to stand. Now, however, another man was in +his stead. At near view Harry recognised him as one whose place was +further along, next the wall, and glancing in that direction he saw +that Paddy the Brick was running the other's machine. + +The meaning of the "wireless" message leaped instantly to his mind. +When, after dinner, the long line had broken and distributed its units, +the man had taken number nine, and the exchange had been effected so +quickly and naturally that it had been thus far unnoted by the watchful +Superintendent sitting moveless on the raised platform at the end of +the aisle, his revolvers on the desk before him. What did the transfer +mean? Harry wondered. The men nearby worked on, but they seemed to be +restive, waiting for something, with a subdued excitement and anxiety. +As he glanced sideways toward the newcomer, at the haggard parchment +visage, lean and ashen with the pallor of long confinement, he noted +that the other kept his back to the platform and his head studiously +bent over his machine, and there darted to Harry's recollection what +Paddy the Brick had said one day to him--of the "lifer" and his hatred +of the warden. The tapped message of the morning had spoken of the +latter, too. "Your ... chance!" Could that have meant the chance to +"get" the man he hated? + +As if in answer to the startled thought, there sounded voices behind +him. He looked over his shoulder. The Warden himself was entering the +door at the end of the shop, and there were visitors with him. + +Then instantly every conscious thought save one fled from him and he +clapped a hand to his mouth to stifle a cry. With the Warden were +three figures, a man and two women, and the women were Echo Allen and +Nancy Langham. + +A sickness like that of death rushed upon him. That she could come +there--careless of the chance that she might see him in these loathsome +surroundings--a common convict, with cropped hair and striped clothing, +marked with all the badges of the jailbird--smote him with an +unendurable pain. She, who knew that he had loved her--to see him in +this guise! All the agony he had suffered rolled over him anew, +intensified a thousand-fold. He pulled his cap-visor low over his eyes +and snatching up the bit of oily waste, drew it across his cheek, +smudging his face from chin to brow. + +The little group of four had paused near the desk of the +Superintendent, the Warden smilingly pointing out to the two girls the +details of the work. Harry's fingers performed their task by sheer +instinct; for his very life he had not been able to help stealing a +swift sidelong look at Echo's face, pale beneath its russet cloud of +hair, and he distinguished with a fierce bitterness the jaded shadows +that had crept beneath her eyes, tokens that belied her conventionally +polite show of interest. So, though she condemned him to this torture, +she too suffered! + +Could he have looked beneath that controlled exterior he would have +discerned a pain and dread to match his own. With that luncheon in the +dining-car a sense of fate had fallen upon her, heavy and irrevocable, +as though some huge weight was closing down. The whip of conscience +had driven her to this day's quest. If the law had erred--if, in truth +an innocent man, as Mason believed, lay under condemnation--it was for +lack of her testimony: the thought had laid upon her sensitive mind a +new sense of guilty responsibility. She must be certain, beyond +peradventure. The visit to the Evelands for the Thanksgiving season +had furnished the opportunity and the round of the Penitentiary with +Malcolm had arranged itself. It had been easy to advert to Mason's +belief in the innocence of the prisoner he had defended, and it had +seemed natural enough for her to ask the Warden to point out the man as +they went through the shops. They had now entered the room in which he +had told her the man worked--she was standing on the threshold of the +knowledge she feared. + +She started at the Warden's voice, close to her ear, above the rasping +clamour of the machines: "The last row, at the end. The middle +machine--that's the one." + +With a quick intake of her breath she looked where he pointed. The +colour faded from her cheeks. Doubt--if she had clung to doubt--was +ended now! The man who had started with levelled pistol from behind +the curtain of Craig's library had been short and stocky and +round-shouldered. The side-face of the distant prisoner at whom she +was now looking with such painful intensity, under the shadow of his +cap-brim showed smudged with oil and dust; but his shoulders were broad +and straight and his frame tall and lithe. Whatever the law said, this +man was not the man who had shot Craig! She alone could swear it! + +She felt suddenly a kind of terror of the place. She touched Malcolm's +arm. "I've seen enough--please! Could we turn back now?" + +The Warden overheard and nodded. "Just wait here a moment," he said, +"and we'll go. I want to take a look forward." He strode from them +down the broad way between the lines of workers. + +Harry heard the step behind him on the steel floor. He thought the +others were with him. Under the rattle of the cogs his sick +imagination caught the swish of a dress--almost he thought he caught a +faint breath of a familiar perfume--and he averted his face till they +should pass. It was by reason of this that his lowered eyes caught a +stealthy movement in the man at the next machine--a movement of one +hand which crept under his jacket, and jerked forth, clutching +something shining and murderous. + +Harry acted without conscious thought, by swift and certain instinct. +As the lean arm, tense with hate, went up behind the Warden's back, he +leaped forward with a cry of warning, caught the wrist whose hand held +the sharpened file, and both went down clinched and struggling together. + +The cry, sharp and strained, pierced across the din. It brought the +Superintendent to his feet on his platform, like the release of a +coiled spring, a revolver in either hand. + +"Back to the door!" he roared, and Malcolm's sinewy arm swept the two +girls behind him. The fierce clamour of a bell sounded outside. There +was sudden pandemonium. Doors opened, men in uniform dashed by her, +and on the platform the Superintendent stood, crouching forward like a +panther about to spring, still as a statue, both hands outstretched +with their gleaming muzzles, his eyes flashing over the room. + +In that desperate struggle, as he clung to the maddened convict, Harry +was conscious only of the strenuous confusion--of commands that snapped +like whip-lashes--of the burly form of the Warden above him and that of +a "trusty" who snatched at the vicious weapon--of a sudden anguished +pang in his shoulder. + +Then, swiftly and sweetly, the whole world slipped away into blankness +and silence. + + +A half hour later, as Echo and Nancy sat with Malcolm in the office, on +the ground floor of the frame building just inside the great double +gates of the prison, the Warden entered. His grave face lightened with +a smile of reassurance. + +"All well," he said cheerfully. "It came close to being a nasty wound, +but the doctor says no harm will come of it, though he will be in the +hospital ward for a week. I wouldn't have had this fracas happen while +you ladies were here for a year's salary," he added, "and that's a +fact!" + +Nancy's face was still pale, and she shivered as he spoke, but she gave +a little laugh, as she said, "We didn't bring you luck to-day, did we? +You'll be wary of Friday visitors hereafter." + +"On the contrary," he asserted, "I'm inclined to think I'm a mighty +lucky man. It was cunningly planned, with collusion, too, and if it +had succeeded there might have been a very bad hour or two--for +everybody." + +Malcolm turned to him. "The man saved the situation, Warden, and it +was a very close call, indeed. If there was collusion I imagine it'll +be dangerous in the ranks for him hereafter." + +The Warden nodded. "I've thought of that. The trusty who has been +clerking in the Record-Room, upstairs, is sick, as it happens. He +shall have the place. He sha'n't come to any harm as long as I'm in +charge, rest assured of that." + +He went with them to the great double-gate. "It's a curious thing," he +said thoughtfully, as they said good-bye, "that the man who did that +should have been the very one we had been talking about, isn't it?" + +The same thought was in all their minds. There had flashed across +Echo's, too, a memory of her childhood, a revolting incident of another +prison, where a hundred convicts had risen, had killed their keepers +and for two days had run desperate riot within the enclosure--till +troops had been rushed to the scene. What if that flaming human lava +had burst beyond control to-day? She shuddered. + +A single hand, maybe, had prevented this--the hand of the man who once +before had saved her--who was now shut in this horrible place, perhaps +for want of the testimony which she alone could give! + + + + +CHAPTER XXXII + +THE COMING OF JOHN STARK + +Harry rose from his seat at the desk in the Record-Room and went over +to the window. The frost had painted silver ferns and sea weed on its +pane, and the prison yard, under the high, saffron-tinted sun, was +white with a light powdering of snow which hid its harsh outlines and +dingy yellow hue with a mantle of purity and beauty. It was a stinging +cold though sunshiny afternoon. Along the wall the sentries, as they +paced, swung benumbed arms to start the sluggish blood coursing to +warmth. Here and there on the hard ground a pigeon traced its feathery +footprints, startling the quarrelsome sparrows, and above in the clear +sky a buzzard drew widening circles, an ink-blot on the blue. Across +the open space came the muffled roar of the shops and down under the +inner gateway the gate-keeper was stamping his Arctic-shod feet and +whistling "Weep no more my lad-ee," in syncopated time. + +Two weeks Harry had been in the hospital ward, for after those months +of confinement the depleted blood had made recuperation slow; but he +had steadily mended, and now, though still at times his healing +shoulder pained him somewhat, he was practically as strong as before. +He had been acutely grateful for the change to the pleasant +Record-Room, with its broad window to the sunshine and the drier upper +air, for the fact that he no longer tramped in the lock-step or took +his meals in the common mess-room--most of all for release from his +unsavoury cell-mate. For since the affair in the shop, he had been +given a cell to himself. + +His momentary glimpse on that day of Echo had stung his every sense to +quivering protest. It had pierced, as with a fiery sword, the torpor +which had unwrapped his love with its protecting armour and that love +had awaked to agonised consciousness, vivified and intensified. Then, +in his loneliness, the knowledge that the woman he would have died for +had left him to drag out his penalty, would sweep over him till a +fierce hatred of her would rise up in him--to be swept away as swiftly +by something sweeter and stronger that would not be denied. So, in the +end, mingled with this confusion of feeling, there came to him the +knowledge that the bitter conviction that she could never again be +anything to him, with the contempt for life which had grown from it, +had been nevertheless inexpressibly softened by the living warmth of +her presence, sad and fleeting as that had been. + +Presently Harry turned back to the desk, and picked up the annotated +card, a portion of whose record he had been about to transcribe in +permanent form in a leathern tome that lay there. It was the +filing-card on whose reverse side was pasted his own photograph, +full-face and profile, and containing his physical measurements--taken +upon the precise and delicate instruments that lined the room--which +had been filled out on the day of his arrival. It was the sight of +this, with the bitter memories it evoked, which had given him pause. +There it was, an enduring monument, stamping forever the man to whom it +corresponded, a convict, thrust, so long as he should live, from the +society of clean and upright men and women, debarred even from the +exercise of the functions of citizenship! + +As he dipped his pen in the ink, a quick step sounded on the stairway, +and the door opened to admit a man wearing a frogged overcoat with huge +fur collar and lapels, and a fur cap whose flaps were turned down over +his ears. He was about Harry's age though of slightly heavier build, +with somewhat similar firm chin and grey eyes, but with cheeks in which +the blood darkled redly, and across one was a slanting scar, slight but +sufficiently perceptible. He carried a small valise which he set down, +blowing on his nattily-gloved fingers. + +"Oh! I beg pardon," he said. "The Warden told me I might change my +togs up here. I didn't know the room was occupied." + +"You'll not disturb me," answered Harry. "As it happens, I am occupied +too." + +The stranger laughed--a rather eager, boyish laugh which caught Harry +with a subtle tang of old acquaintance. With the pen in his hand, he +was staring curiously at that ruddy cheek and its slanting scar, his +mind following something elusive and far away. He was feeling the edge +of a half-recollection, vague and shadowy and dream-like, of a saw-dust +bar-room floor lighted with flaring lamps, of ribald conversation, of a +deal table across which a face like that had looked at him. But the +memory at which he grasped had belonged to that phase of intoxication +in which sense-impression had left no enduring record, and he could not +capture it. + +John Stark was unconscious of the fixed gaze. He had opened the valise +upon a chair and now was laying its contents upon another. Harry saw +with surprise that these included a striped jacket and trousers, flat +peaked cap and heavy hob-nailed shoes such as each inmate of the prison +wore. Last he took out a flat tin box which opened out in two +sections, and set it on the end of the desk. It was a "make-up" box of +the stage dressing-room, and the sight of its tiny compartments, +holding rouge, lamp-black, powder and grease-paint, the pencils and +hare's foot, brought back to Harry with a rush old days of amateur +theatricals and society stagery. These articles laid out, the other +began rapidly to undress. He chuckled as, turning, he caught the look +of puzzle on Harry's face. + +"I'm not really crazy," he said laughingly. "The fact is, I'm trying +an experiment--with the Warden's permission. For half an hour I'm +going to take my place with those fellows down there;"--he nodded +towards the window--"going in to supper with them. I have a bet on +with the Deputy Warden that I can do it so that none of the +Superintendents will spot me!" + +He had discarded shirt, collar and shoes, and was now arraying himself +in the coarse striped garments and clumsy foot-wear. He looked himself +over half-humorously. "Ugh!" he exclaimed. "I swear, it gives me the +creeps. This is the real stuff, you see! I don't get the true spirit +of the thing when I play it." + +"When you play it?" repeated Harry, inquiringly. + +"Oh," said the other. "I ought to explain. I'm starring in 'The Jail +Bird'--the play that's on here this week. I have the title-role. It's +a fad with me to get up my 'business' first-hand, and this institution +is too good a chance to miss. It's mighty good press-agent stuff for +the local papers, incidentally!" The lid of the tin box was a mirror, +and propping this upright, he now busied himself with the facial +make-up, applying a greyish grease-paint which obliterated the scar on +the cheek and lent the requisite pallor, and deepening this with darker +pencilled shades. In the midst of his labour he asked: + +"Have you seen the piece?" + +"No," said Harry, grimly. "Our business here interferes somewhat with +our evening pleasures." + +Something in the tone made the other look up quickly. Harry's cap had +been pushed back when the visitor had entered. He had on, also, a +spotless duck over-jacket which buttoned close up to the throat. Now +the cap was pulled low on his forehead, and the jacket was open, +revealing the tell-tale stripes beneath. The actor started. + +"By Jove!" he ejaculated, in embarrassment. "I thought--I didn't +know--" + +"So I perceived," said Harry calmly. "Pray do not apologise, however. +The atmosphere does not tend to develop over-sensitiveness. I must +congratulate you on your appearance. The effect is really wonderful." + +There was no sarcasm in his words: the illusion was marvellously +carried. When the peaked cap was pulled over the other's forehead, a +little to one side, Harry thought him highly likely to carry off his +wager with the Deputy Warden. + +At the moment the bell sounded--the signal to knock off work for the +early supper--and John Stark rose hastily. "I'm off now for the +lock-step," he said, with his hand on the door. "By the way, if these +duds of mine are in the way, chuck 'em in some other room. I can dress +anywhere." + +The brogans clattered down the stair. + +Harry went to the window and watched him cross the yard, a turnkey, +wearing a suppressed grin, by his side. Then he returned to the desk, +but his pen lay idle by his hand. The curious visit, with its whiff of +the outside world, had been packed with clutching reminders of things +that had had pleasant part in his past--reminders of society nights +when, for sweet charity's sake, he had played those old mimic roles. +Some one entered, bringing his supper in a tin pail, and went out +again, but he did not look up. He was thinking with bitterness that +the flippant masquerader, sitting now with that striped company in the +mess-room, would presently emerge, free to pass out into the glad +world. It would be only a lark to laugh over, an essay in effrontery +performed for a wager and the delectation of a press-agent! + +Harry suddenly felt the longing to be free take him by the throat, so +that he trembled in every limb with the force of it. He smelled the +wind racing across frosty meadows; he could almost fancy that he heard +the flow of river-water under its icy coverlet; he could almost see the +gnarled catalpas along the Allen driveway lifting their wintry twisted +arms toward him. What would it not mean to him if he, like that +cheerful stroller, might but slough off this hateful, unnatural +character and step forth, himself again! + +He started. A thought mad as a nightmare had flashed through his +brain. He felt his blood beat to his temples; then instantly he became +icily cool and tense in every nerve. + +In another moment he had thrown off his over-jacket, and was seated +before the make-up box. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIII + +THE UNDERSTUDY + +With the certainty of ancient practice he applied rouge and pencil +deftly to his face, rubbing in a deeper tinge on the cheeks, shadowing +the temples, accentuating by ever so little the corners of eyes and +mouth. Lastly he drew a slanting scar on the right cheek, emphasising +it a trifle, as the keynote of the counterfeit. + +He looked at himself, swiftly, critically. There was but the one +double gate and the single watchman to pass--and the sunlight was not +bright under the archway! And luckily the fur cap, with its ear-flaps, +effectually hid the cropped scalp. He wasted no time in changing +clothes, but turned up the striped trousers and the sleeves of the +jacket and donned the smart habilaments over his prison rig, the extra +lining compensating for his slighter form. In five minutes he was +completely dressed, even to spats and flaunting tie. All the while he +was thinking rapidly and coolly, weighing contingencies, estimating +chances, taking into lightning account each detail which might mean the +slenderest advantage in the desperate game. Lastly he thrust his +prison cap under his coat and put the make-up box and the tin +dinner-pail into the empty valise. + +Overcoated and with the valise in his hand, he strode to the door--to +come back to his desk with a quick afterthought, to pick up the +record-card that bore his own number, and slip it into an inner pocket. +Then he opened the door and went quickly down the stair. + +Fate was kind. The Warden was not in his office. As a matter of fact, +at that very moment, with outward gravity yet with inner amusement, he +was witnessing John Stark's nonchalant experiment and finding the bit +of clever impersonation, under the very eyes of his unsuspecting +assistants, vastly diverting. + +Harry went out to the gate. + +The watchman looked up, surprised. "Hello!" he said. "The half-hour +isn't up already, is it? Or did you weaken?" + +Harry laughed. "Not I!" he answered, airily. "I've had no end of a +lark. I'd have stayed longer only I've got a rehearsal on. I could +have pulled the wool over their eyes for a week!" As he spoke he drew +out a silver cigarette-and-match box which his hand had encountered in +the overcoat pocket, and lighted a cigarette behind his cupped hands. +In that crucial instant he dared not look at the face so near him and +his heart seemed to flutter and then stop beating--till there came the +ponderous grind of the great lock as the inner gate swung open. + +The watchman was chuckling as he unlocked the outer barrier. "Well, +that's one on the Deputy Warden!" he said appreciatively. "You're a +clever one to have pulled it off!" + +Harry stepped jauntily through. "Come and see me do it on the stage," +he said, nodding a brisk good-bye. "It's up to the Warden to stand +tickets all round, I should think!" + +The gate clanged shut behind him. + +The sound sent to his soul the first agonised stab of futility. He had +won through those pitiless encircling walls, yet what chance had he of +ultimate escape, after all, there on the highway, in that recognisable +costume, with scant grace at best from pursuit? Then, even as the cold +wave of hopelessness swept over him, he saw something which sent his +blood running like quicksilver; it was the actor's empty motor standing +at the side of the road. + +In another minute he was in its seat, his grip on the wheel, his hand +touching the lever of the self-starter. It was not of a make which he +knew, but he had always been an ardent motorist, had known every cog +and bearing of his own car's intricate mechanism, and before the +machine was well under way he had mastered its essentials. + +As the snow-dusted road spun out behind him, he drew deep, gasping +breaths of the cold air and felt the dimming sunshine on his face like +the touch of some magical elixir, yet he was free from agitation, his +mind was working clearly and coolly. The alarm would come soon. When +the genial young tragedian returned to the office building, he would be +likely to assume that his suggestion had been acted upon, and his +clothing bestowed in another room. Subsequent inquiry might be worth a +few minutes. The absence of Harry's cap and the tin pail would suggest +that he had gone to his cell to eat his supper, a privilege that was +his when he cared to avail himself of it--this would be good for a few +minutes more. A general search of the buildings would be next in +order. How soon the inquiry would embrace the watchman at the outer +gate could not be guessed. Altogether he might count, perhaps, on a +half-hour. He could cover few miles in that time, and telephone and +the clicking wire would soon be busy. It would be the automobile that +would be first traced, and the sentries on the wall would report the +direction he had taken. He must rid himself of the car, and somehow +double on his trail! + +Far to the right, across wastes of snowy fields and numb, glittering +trees, a line of telegraph poles thrust up darkly against the skyline. +A quick plan flashed to his mind. The road was topping a gentle rise +now, where the wind had swept the hard ground clear of the light snow. +He stopped, and cast a glance before and behind him; no vehicle was in +sight. He sprang out and pulled out the rails of the fence that lined +the road, then ran the motor into the field and into a hollow of dead, +rustling stalks, where stood a group of hayricks which would +effectually hide it from the highway. He left the fur-overcoat and the +valise in the car, replaced the fence-rails and ran across the field to +the railroad track. A quarter of a mile further along stood a small +country station and he turned his steps thither, making shift as he +went to wipe the grease-paint from his face with John Stark's perfumed +handkerchief. + +The ticket-seller, who combined with his duties those of freight and +express agent and general factotum, was sweeping out his tiny box of an +office. "What is the next train west?" inquired Harry. + +"None till nine to-night," was the reply. "There's one due in twenty +minutes, but she only stops for through passengers." + +Before entering Harry had gone through John Stark's pockets; now he +pushed a bill under the little wicket. "I happen to be going through," +he said easily. + +The other made out the ticket with deliberation, laboriously counted +the change and leisurely went out to the platform to affix the red +flag. The minutes that passed thereafter the lone passenger was all +his life to remember as a ghastly interval measured by dragging epochs +that drew themselves snail-like across some incalculable duration of +time. When the express came to its grinding stop cold drops of +perspiration were on Harry's face. He swung himself aboard and went +forward to the day-coach. + +Five minutes later the train stopped at a water-tank, to refresh the +thirsty engine. A half mile away, outlined sombrely against the dusky +evening blue, rose a huddle of dingy yellow walls. The occupant of the +seat in front of him leaned to look through the window. + +"What are those buildings?" he asked interestedly of the conductor, who +was passing down the aisle. + +"That's the State Penitentiary," was the answer. + +As he spoke through the silence there came a deep, dull _boom_, +repeated again and again--the sound of a monster bell, tolling. + +"What's that?" the other asked. Windows went up along the car. Harry +lifted his also, with outward coolness but with a curious spasm of the +heart. The conductor stooped to peer beside him. + +"It's the alarm," he said. "A prisoner must have escaped." + +Amid excited exclamations the train started again, and the conductor +withdrew his head. "They'll soon get him," he predicted, as he punched +Harry's ticket. "The poor devil won't get far in those striped clothes +they make them wear!" + +"No," said Harry. "I fancy he won't." + + +Night had fallen, the dark relieved by the dim lustre of a thin new +moon, when Sevier rose and sauntered back to the platform. The train +was passing through a defile and laboriously puffing up a grade. He +looked back into the lighted car; no one was observing him. He +buttoned his coat close about him and poising on the lowest step to +choose his ground, sprang off into a snowbank. + +He had made his leap with all the care possible, but the speed of the +train was such that only the snow and his padded clothing saved him +from serious injury. As it was it was some minutes before he could +regain his breath, and then it came with a keen stab that seemed a +sword piercing his shoulder--a sharp complaint from the recent wound. +He rose painfully, but at the first step collapsed with a groan, +realising that he had twisted his ankle badly. With lips compressed +from the wretched pang, he rose again and set the injured member to the +ground, forcing it to bear his weight. For a while each step was +agony, then this dulled somewhat and he went steadily on, limping along +the uneven ties. + +When he came to the crest of the rise he stopped and looked about him. +He knew, roughly, where he was. Across the dark valley unrolling at +his feet under a sky that shook with stars, he could dimly make out +another darker ridge. Beyond lay a deeper valley and beyond that the +foot-hills of the Blue Ridge, and there, forty miles away as the crow +flies--how far by the irregular route he must take he could not +estimate--lay his mountain lodge, the lonely little demesne of forest +and stream, whither he had been wont to go for summer weeks of hunting +and fishing, with its rough but spacious bungalow presided over by his +care-taker, old "Jubilee Jim," whose father had been a slave of his +father before the Civil War. + +Forty miles as the crow flies! Across a difficult and sparsely-settled +country, with now only the faint moonlight and a natural instinct of +direction to guide him, in patent-leather shoes and with a sprained +ankle! + +He set his teeth and plunged down the declivity through the tumbled +rocks and snow-drifts. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIV + +THE CRUCIBLE + +Echo stood at the gate of Midfields, her gloved hand delaying to close +it, her eyes gazing down the featureless street along which yellow +window-squares were beginning to spring out, and vague figures moved, +now standing out sharply under the newly lighted arc-lamps at the +crossing, now vanishing beyond into the chill windless dusk. Behind +her lay the purpling lawn, with its tumult of leaves under the acacias, +the oaks with their red-lipped foliage and the tall chrysanthemums at +the edge of the frost-touched grass that stretched like the skins of +young fawns about the great house with its fluted columns, dim and grey +now in the deepening twilight. About her were only the quiet of the +cold evening, the bewildered shadows huddling beneath the shrubs, and +the faint snap of frosty tree-branches in the tightening of the first +bonds of winter, above only the windless silence and a wild white moon +flowing through dusky wreaths of cloud. + +But she felt no soothing influence in the hush. + +Her mind was far away, in another city and state; her thought had +entered again the gloomy prison which she had visited with Nancy +Langham and Malcolm--on a day when a prisoner had intervened to save +the Warden's life. The peace of autumn evenings brought no comfort to +that place, save it were the mere rest of wearied bodies. A city of +itself, it was as alien to that city so near it, of comfortable homes +and pleasant people which she had visited, as the deep life of the +coal-miner is alien to that of the free hunter who breathes the sweeter +air a thousand feet above the other's sunless toil. Outside of those +walls folk were eager and merry; inside lights were dim, life itself +sluggish and inept; there were sore hearts, sterile hopes, smouldering +hatreds, an oligarchy of despotism ruling with slow cruelties, a +community of apathy and despair. + +Since her return from the Langhams she had moved, so it seemed to her, +in a kind of sombre dream in which her daily duties were mechanical and +involuntary and her only real life that inner consciousness which had +writhed and struggled unceasingly. A sense of actual, personal guilt +bound her, by a bond stronger than steel, to that unknown prisoner in +the Penitentiary, weighing upon her spirit as heavy as a promise to the +dead. + +What should she--what was she bound to do? Which way should she turn? +There was Mason's opinion, based upon a long and sensitive intercourse, +that the man was no criminal; that, had he been absolved of attempted +murder, he could have cleared himself of the baleful association. But +that, after all, was only Mason's opinion. He might be wrong. And if +so, though the man had not fired the shot, he was a partner in his +comrade's iniquity, a party to the greater guilt. An enemy to society, +his penalty was just and right. Was she called upon, on such an empty +hypothesis, to take upon herself a horrible mantle of notoriety? So +she had reasoned, but the self-accusation had remained, not to be +argued back by casuistry, a stern visitant that stood insistently +before her, pointing the stern finger of denunciation. + +As she stood by the gate in the dusk, she shivered as though the still +cold penetrated beneath her furs. She must tell the truth! Whatever +the result, she must disclose the part she had played. She had no +thought that this might be accomplished without publicity, or that +testimony which might be basis for executive action could be secret. +In imagination she pictured herself standing before the same tribunal +by which an innocent man had been condemned, telling her story to the +impartial and impersonal Law--telling it openly, before all the world! + +The world? It was not this thought which in this moment of harrowing +decision seemed to scratch her soul like an etcher's needle. She was +thinking now only of Harry Sevier. He stood out alone, sharply, +clearly defined against the meaningless multitude. She could no longer +take refuge in her pride; that had vanished long ago in the misery of +his absence. She wanted him, and him only, desired him with all the +strength of her woman's love, which had been sharpened and deepened by +the experiences through which she had been passing. When he returned, +it would be to find her the centre of an open scandal, sprung to new +and sensational life--the "mysterious woman" who had been blazoned in a +hundred headlines, her name no longer spotless, but cheapened by tawdry +mystery and smirched by innuendo! Would it not kill any vestige of +love his heart might still hold for her? + +And yet beneath her dread and apprehension there had come to her in her +struggle the awakening of something as deep and imperative as her +love--the insistent "Thou shalt!"--the nascent must of truth and +honour, fruit of generations of clean ancestry, which brought clearer +vision and resolve. + +She turned from the gate at length, her step dragging as if from +weariness. She had a strange feeling that in that final hour of +decision she had grown physically and mentally old. + +As she neared the house, there came from the placid street the raucous +_honk_ of a motor and the sound of masculine voices lifted in a song +whose refrain solicitously inquired as to the whereabouts of a certain +dog named Rover. The chording was somewhat uncertain, but any lack was +more than made up by laughter and noise. She recognised the baritone +as that of her brother, Chisholm. + +Chilly jumped down at the gate, and as the automobile turned and sped +back, its occupants calling jovial good-byes, he ran after her up the +drive. Overtaking her, he leaned to kiss her cheek, as she caught a +familiar odour upon his breath. She turned her face aside. + +He noted this with a little laugh. "Come, prunes and prisms," he said, +"out with it! Yes, I've had a drink--numerous ones, in fact. Now on +with the lecture; let joy be unconfined!" + +"When did I ever lecture you, Chilly?" Echo answered, dully. + +"You _have_ been pretty decent, that's a fact, Echo," he responded, +with humorous lugubriousness. "I wish father took after you more!" + +They had reached the porch now and he stole a quick glance through the +window. "I discern the shadow of my doting parent aforesaid," he +remarked flippantly, "and having a due regard for the proprieties--and +peace--I think I'll slip in the side-door and give the prodigal a +wash-up and a clove before he enters the lion's den." + +He nodded laughingly and left her to enter the front door alone. + +A few minutes later, divested of coat and furs, she came into the +drawing-room where her father and mother sat, the former with his +magazine and the latter perusing the evening paper. Mrs. Allen +withdrew her lorgnette and looked up. + +"By the way, Echo," she said. "Here's the closing chapter of the +adventure you and Nancy had at the jail." She turned the page and read +aloud: + + +"It became known to-day that a dangerous criminal escaped day before +yesterday and got clean away from the Penitentiary of our sister state. +The prisoner, who was serving a term of twenty years for burglary, a +few months since shot down Mr. Cameron Craig, the well known financier, +in his library at midnight. It is to be hoped that there will be a +close examination into what appears to be a glaring exhibition of lax +methods and unpardonable carelessness on the part of the prison +authorities." + + +Echo could not have had a deeper sensation of amazement and relief. A +wave of excitement had passed over her, leaving her cool and +self-possessed, and able to take a natural part in the conversation +that followed. But in her heart she was saying over and over: + +"I am safe--safe! There is no question now of my telling! The secret +is mine--mine--mine!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXXV + +SANCTUARY + +In his little cabin, close by a big log-walled bungalow on a lonely +slope of the Blue Ridge, now snugly frozen in by its winter snows, old +"Jubilee Jim" lay in a deep sleep. The moonlight, paling before the +coming dawn, came through the single window, lighting dimly the seamed +black face on the pallet, the sacks of flour and beans in the corner, a +side of bacon hung against the wall and strings of dried red-peppers +and bunches of herbs suspended from the rafters. On the floor before +the fire-place, in which a few red embers still glowed, snored a yellow +hound, gaunt and long of limb. + +There was no other house within miles of the place, but solitariness +was a habit with Jubilee Jim, and he did not miss human companionship. +Ten years before, the man who had chosen that wild spot and had built +the bungalow for occasional summer outings with his chosen comrades, in +which they might shoot and fish and live in primitive, health-giving +fashion, has ensconced the old negro there as general cook and +care-taker. He had built himself a tight little cabin close at hand +and remained there year in and year out to guard the building against +the frequent forest fires. In his pottering negro way he was a Jack of +many trades, in the summer cultivating a little cleared patch of +"garden truck" back of his cabin and in winter trapping small game, and +of evenings poring over his Bible, spelling out the words +laboriously--a gift he had learned many years before from some country +"missioner." Three or four times a year, leaving the lean hound in +possession, he trudged ten miles to the nearest village for what +supplies he needed. But on these occasions he felt no temptation to +remain with his kind, toiling back contentedly to his little cabin, his +hound, and his Bible. + +Suddenly, in the tense frozen silence, the great hound stirred and +lifted his head with a low guttural growl. His master woke and turned +on the creaking couch. + +"He-e-sh!" he said impatiently. "Whut fo' yo' want ter mek dat noise +en steal mah sleep!" + +At the remonstrance the lean tail thumped the board floor, but another +louder growl, deep and menacing, came from the shaggy throat. The old +negro lifted himself and listened. + +"Sumpen out dar!" muttered Jubilee Jim, straining his ears, for now he +caught the sound that had pricked the acuter hearing of the animal--a +curious, struggling sound like something wallowing in heavy snowdrifts. + +"Sumpen _big_!" Jubilee Jim's wrinkled face looked puzzled in the +moonlight and his eyes rolled to the wall where, on two wooden pegs, +sat an old-fashioned shot-gun. "Don' reck'n et's er bar!" he whispered +to the hound. "Ain't ben no bar eroun' hyuh en mawn thuhty yeahs!" He +got up and set his ear to the crack of the door. As he bent his +stooped frame, something lunged against the wall outside, and at the +sound the hound's bristles rose and he sent forth a fierce, rumbling +bay that rattled the window. + +"Et's er _man_!" said Jubilee Jim. He turned hastily to the rough-hewn +table and lighted a lantern; then snapping a chain into the dog's +collar and tethering him to the wall, he went to the door and lifted +its heavy bar. It opened inward and there half stumbled, half fell +across the threshold a snowy figure that collapsed at his feet. + +"Mah Lawd!" ejaculated the old man. "What he doin' hyuh?" + +With a sharp word to the leaping, raging hound, he dragged the +recumbent body inside, shut the door, and lighted a bundle of pine +knots in the fire-place. In the bright yellow light that flooded the +cabin he knelt down and examined the man who lay there. He drew off +the frosty fur cap from the close-clipped head. The coat was stiff +with frost so that he had trouble to unbutton and remove it, and the +shoes were broken. He took a knife and carefully cut them off from the +feet, noticing with quick pity that one ankle was swollen to twice its +natural size. + +"Reck'n yo' mos' froze ter def!" said Jubilee Jim. "En starved too!" +He rummaged on a shelf, found an iron skillet containing some broth and +set it close to the blazing wood. Then, he drew the limp figure upon +his couch and began to remove the clothing, now wet and clinging. + +As he opened the shirt, however, he started back with an exclamation. + +Well he knew what that jacket with its black and yellow-grey stripes +meant! Had he not often seen the sullen chain-gang breaking stone on +the mountain roads? The man who lay before him was a criminal in +desperate flight in stolen garments! He could tie him fast, +unconscious and helpless as he was, and leave the dog to guard him, +while he went down to the town for officers. But as he thought, +something else came to his mind. "Sick en in prison, en ye visited +me!" he muttered. "De Good Man he say dat. Dis hyuh man done been in +prison, en he moughty sick too. What dee Good Man do, Ah wondah? +Reck'n he ain' gwine lock him up, not 'treckly, nohow!" + +He saw a crimson stain that spread over the stripes. He touched it--it +was blood. + +Five minutes later, in the warming cabin, he was examining an opened +wound in the shoulder of the insensible man. He washed it carefully +and bound it up with some of the medicinal herbs that hung from the +rafters. This done, he took the skillet from the fire-place and with a +spoon forced a little of the hot liquid, drop by drop, between the +clenched teeth. Under these ministrations a semblance of life began to +return to the exhausted frame, and with it the chilled body rushed into +a fever. The head began to roll from side to side and the lips to +mutter indistinguishably. + +The hound had grown quiet now, and released from the chain, came to +sniff at the bunk. All at once he flung up his great head with a low +howl, then, crouching, licked the nerveless hand that hung down. + +[Illustration: All at once the hound flung up his great head with a low +howl, then, crouching, licked the nerveless hand that hung down] + +Jubilee Jim looked in startled amaze, then seized the lantern and held +it close. "Who dis hyuh?" he said. + +As if at the challenge, the eyes in the white face opened and for a +single instant consciousness flickered there. "Jube--" said a weak +voice, "you--old--scoundrel--" Then the eyes closed and the mutterings +recommenced. + +The lantern rattled on the floor, as the old negro fell upon his knees +by the pallet. "Et's him!" he cried. "Dee Lawd he'p! Et's Marse +Harry hese'f!" He leaned and looked, with a painful bewilderment, at +the striped garments, the smooth, clipped scalp. "Huccome he got dem +close on?" he said to himself, half-fearfully. He stood a moment +looking from them to the pallet, then hastily rolled the sodden things +into a bundle and thrust it out of sight behind one of the sacks on the +floor. + + +Late the next afternoon the smoke from the stone chimney of the big +bungalow rose in a pale spiral into the keen windless air. Inside a +leaping fire of chestnut wood burned on the huge hearth and Harry lay +on a comfortable, blanket-covered couch in the corner. All day long +Jubilee Jim had watched beside him, as he tossed in delirium, now and +then touching the hot hand, laying cooling cloths on the fevered wound, +or feeding him with a spoon. He had not dared go down the mountain to +fetch a doctor, fearing to leave his patient so long alone. + +All day, as he watched, his slow brain had been busy with the +strangeness of that arrival--most of all with the mystery of the +striped clothes. To his simple intelligence, unvexed by the +complexities of life in communities, evil and good stood out in sharp +and irreconcilable contradistinction, and the garments were a harrowing +symbol. But deep in him was that profound, unreasoning belief--the +South's touching legacy of ante-bellum days--that trust and confidence +that is dog-like and unswerving. + +Towards evening, when the sick man became easier and he lay more +quietly, though his fever ran high, Jubilee Jim opened the door, and +stood looking out onto the lone, frosty hillside. The sun was going +down amid a flutter of scarlet scarfs and the marbled pines stood in +sombre clusters outlined like sentinels above the pansied twilight of +the snowy valley. At length he knelt down and with gnarled hands +clasped and eyes still on the colourful sky, he said: + +"O Lawd, Ah don' know what mek Marse Harry come hyuh lak dis. But yo' +knows what he done fo' ole Jube. Keep him yeahs en yeahs, feed him, en +when he so sick he gwine die, tek en git er doctah en cure him up. +When ah so old ah ain' no good no mo' he gimme dee lan' up hyuh fo' tuh +live on. Don' do nuffin cep'n watch dee house, en when he come +sometimes Ah cooks fo' him--das all! Ah don' know whaffuh he have on +dem wicked clo's--don' keer nuth'n erbout dat. Kase, Lawd, Marse Harry +ain' ben fo' tuh do nuth'n _bad_. Dey tek yo' darlin' son, dee Book +says, en put er crown o' tho'ns on he beautiful haid, en he ain' done +nuth'n 'tall cep'n good. Ah don' keer what Marse Harry have on; Ah +reck'n when he come lak dis, Yo' gwine he'p me he'p him--kase das what +he done fo' me!" + +As the earnest voice ceased, another spoke behind him. "Jube!" + +The old man rose hastily and came to the couch. "Yo' knows me ergen, +Marse Harry?" + +"Yes, Jube. When--did I get here?" + +"Dis mawnin', suh, befo' sun-up." + +"Was any one else here?" + +"No, Marse. Ain' ben nobody up hyuh sence dee fust snow-fall." + +Sevier was silent a moment, his eyes fixed on the black, affectionate +face. "Jube--bring me the things I--had on." + +The other crossed the room and came back with a suit which he laid on +the blanket. + +Sevier shook his head feebly. "Not those. The--others." + +Jubilee Jim hesitated, then turned and left the room. When he came +back the striped garments were in his hands. + +"Do you--know what--those are?" + +The faithful, old face turned a little away. "Ah reck'n dem am some +new-fangelly fishin'-close," he said, after a pause. + +A faint flicker of a smile touched the sick man's face. He understood. +"Put them--into--the fire." + +Sevier watched him, as he obeyed. He was very weak and his blood, +poisoned from the opened wound, was throbbing with fever. He was +preserving consciousness only by a great effort, but his gaze held +Jubilee Jim's steadily. + +"Jube, I want--no one to--know when I--came, or that I--am here--at all +... _No one_ ... Do you--understand?" + +"Yas, suh." + +"I'm going--to be--sick. But--no matter--how sick I--no one is to--be +brought here ... not a doctor ... nor--any one." Harry's strength was +failing now, and the words trailed into indistinctness. + +"Yas, Marse Harry." + +"I ... trust you ... Jube!" + +That was all. He was gone again into the fevered delirium. + +All that night, and for many days and nights thereafter, old Jubilee +Jim, faithful to his word, struggled with death over the body of Harry +Sevier. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVI + +JUBILEE JIM'S JOURNEY + +Harry stood in the doorway of the Bungalow, one hand shading his eyes, +looking down the twisting trail to where, far below, a dark blotch +toiled up the slope. During three days he had been alone, for Jubilee +Jim had gone upon a journey to the city where lay the old life from +which Harry had fled on the day he had ceased to be himself. The snows +were gone and an early spring day of azure and gold lay over the satiny +stillness of the folded hills. The fresh, pleasant air was full of the +whirr of birds and the smell of new bark and bursting buds, the slender +birches were unfurling the virginal green of their young leaves, and +here and there on the hillsides blossoms were showing. All nature was +fulfilling its annual mission of rebirth, audaciously triumphing over +autumn's death and winter's sepulture. + +The stalwart figure standing on the threshold was good to see. The +fever that had followed that terrible night of physical exhaustion had +been worsted at last by Jubilee Jim's homely medicaments and the balm +of peace and sleep. There had been days when Harry had been perilously +near the Great Adventure, but assiduous nursing and a splendid native +constitution had in the end conquered. The pure air of the balsam +forest and the comfort of the solitude had at length had their way with +him. The flesh had come back to the wasted frame, the old brightness +to the eye, and the flush of perfect health to the skin. Now, with his +curling hair and his crisp dark beard, trimmed as of old, he was again +the Harry Sevier of a year before--save that back of the eyes was a +steady something, a deep conscious strength that had come to him from +those bitter prison months when his soul had been tried in a fiery +furnace of pain. + +Sevier dropped his hand with a long sigh of relief, for at a turn in +the path, the dark blotch had resolved itself into the figure of a man, +followed by a great dog harnessed to a little cart. "It's Jube!" he +said aloud. "He's made the trip safely, and he's got the things!" + +This journey had been the outcome of much thought on Harry's part. +Lying there in the long weeks of convalescence, his mind had been busy +with the problem of the future. What to do? He could not stay forever +there on the mountain, a lonely hermit. Somewhere, he must take up +life again. When he had beguiled those dark prison moods with thoughts +of freedom, his imagination had pictured flight to some distant country +where, under a borrowed name, he might find a refuge, barren as that +refuge might be of all life's sweetness. Freedom now was his. Should +he put the past forever behind him, make his disappearance good, and +without more ado drop out of sight and sound forever? All his instinct +rebelled against this drastic solution, this cavalier denial of life +and its mental exercise for a career of empty futility. + +What remained then? To go back to the life he had left behind him on +the day he ceased to be Harry Sevier? + +Why not? He was free--free to be himself again. Only one, beside +Echo, had known that he and the captured house-breaker were +identical--that was Craig. And Craig had been taken from his path. +And who else would connect Harry Sevier, the lawyer, the club-man of +well-known and reputable past, the favourite of drawing-rooms--who +could ever associate him with a tawdry burglar and desperate convict +who had escaped from a penitentiary in another State? Once more +bearded and eye-glassed, without scar or mark to point resemblance or +beckon identification, recognition would be the wildest improbability. + +Once, as he bettered, Jubilee Jim had gone to the valley below to +return with a bundle of back-copies of the County newspaper, and as +Harry pored over these avidly, the old life had cried to him from every +line. The movement that had been called into life by the Civic Club, +in the hour when he had made the first speech of his life that had been +untinctured with any personal ambition or selfish motive, had gained +momentum; it had taken on party organisation and would be a force to be +reckoned with in the coming campaign. On that day he had had his first +taste of the joy of battle for a principle, and he longed inexpressibly +to throw the power, of which he was now more than ever conscious, into +the struggle for the new ideal. + +Suppose he went back, and Craig recovered the mind that was now in +eclipse--recovered and remembered? What then? + +His safety lay in the fact that no one possessed the clue to the +unthinkable reality. Craig, if he recovered, would possess this, and +if he in his right senses denounced him, the accusation, spectacular +and incredible as it might seem, would have to be seriously met. And +he could not meet it, for it would be true! So long as Craig lived, +the harrowing danger would always be there--a veritable Sword of +Damocles! Would not his future be forever a dubious adventure, haunted +always by a torturing shadow and the dread of discovery and shame? In +fancy he saw himself seized--to be suddenly confronted with that +shameful thing, to face a cloud of witnesses, be dragged back to a +cell, despised and broken, once more a convict--that, or else flight, +cringing and furtive, with the hounds of the law in cry! + +And yet, did not the chances that Craig would not regain his faculties +vastly preponderate? The newspapers Harry had read had not contained +the item chronicling Craig's journey to Buda-Pesth, and recovery was +not an imminent possibility to his mind. A year had gone by, and all +the skill that wealth could invoke had no doubt been applied, and +vainly. Even if sometime he to some extent recovered, it was more than +likely that his memory of that fatal night in his library would be +impaired. So Harry told himself. + +Over and over he followed the trail of painful reflection, in a vicious +circle that centred always in the one thought that sent his mind +shrinking in upon itself--Echo. What would that old life be to him, +denied its old relations? He and she were nothing to one another any +more: she was only a stinging memory. And he would see her, meet her, +talk with her, always with that sickening pretence of ignorance between +them, in a painful hypocrisy, till she should love and marry--some one +else than him! A wave of sick revolt had surged over him at the +thought. What to him was freedom, even life itself, if each hour held +the thumb-screw and the rack? + +Thus his resolve had swung back and forth, pendulum-like, tiring itself +with the endless question, and much thinking had brought him no nearer +a solution. Meanwhile time had been passing, and pending final +decision it was necessary for him in some measure to pick up the old +threads. There were responsibilities which he had not yet laid down. +There were his apartment, his servants, his office--for though +provision of a sort had fortunately been made for a time, his affairs +must now be put upon a securer basis which would permit of his taking +whatever course should seem best. So, finally, he had sent Jubilee Jim +on the long journey, after thoroughly schooling the old man on the part +he was to play. By him he had sent a letter to his man of business, +with minute instructions which would enable his affairs to be put in +order, another to his bank directing the sale of certain securities for +cash to be held at his instant demand, a third to Suzuki, his Japanese +valet, instructing him to send clothes, and other needful articles, his +private papers and a few books--for solace in this solitude until he +should have determined what to do. + + +"Good, Jube!" said Harry, as the old negro came into the room carrying +the big bundle from his little cart. "You got everything, then?" + +"Yas, Marse Harry. Ah brung dem all--dee papers, en dee close, en dee +money f'um dee bank, en all. Moughty glad ah got dis 'yer ole dawg +erlong, wid sech er heap o' money on me! Reck'n Ah spent er lot--had +tuh pay er qua'tah bof ways fo' him tuh ride on dee baggage-cyah: +wouldn't let him in dee smokah nohow. Dey argyfied he too big." + +Harry spread out the clothing on the table--suits of fashionable cut, +speaking loudly and insistently of the old life. Those he wore at the +moment had once been modish too, but their one-time owner would no +longer have recognised them, for they were threadbare and as battered +as the home-made moccasins on Harry's feet. At the first opportunity +he purposed anonymously to send John Stark double their value, with +certain articles the garments had contained--watch, cigarette-case, +cuff-links and what-not--now wrapped in a little package in a safe +hiding-place. + +Harry turned. "Well, Jube, tell me all about it. When you got off the +train, where did you go first?" + +"To de bank fust. Man dah was moughtily s'prised tuh git yo' lettah. +'Reck'n Mistah Sevier gwine tuh Africy er sumwhah,' he say." + +"Where did you go next?" + +"To Marse Dick Brent's office--whah dey meks dee newspapahs. Foun' him +settin' dah wid er pipe in he mouf, lookin' jes' ez nachul ez life, +same ez when he up hyuh wid yo'-all dat time. Ah cert'n'y glad tuh see +Marse Brent, en he ax pow'ful lot o' questions 'bout yo'. 'Mah lan'!' +he say; 'Tuh think he up in dat ole mount'n all dis God's-blessed time, +loafin' eroun' en gittin' fat ez er buzzard, when we-alls is wu'kin' +ouah souls tuh deff, en polytics gittin' red-hot. Whaffoh he do dat? +When he come up dar, Jube?' 'Well,' Ah says, 'Ah ain' got no haid fo' +gogerfy, Marse Brent, but Ah reck'n et mus' a ben las' fall sometime. +En den Marse Harry ben moughty sick in dee fall en wintah.' 'Sick!' he +say. 'Yo' ole rascal, yo' ain' got no mo' sense dan er snake have +hips! Why yo' don' sen' no word home erbout it?' 'Marse Harry he say +not tuh,' I say. 'Clar' he ain' gwine be no trubbil tuh nobody. So Ah +doctahs him en nusses him, en aftah while he git all right ergen. On'y +he so fon' o' de ole bungalow he jes' cain' bear tuh leave et.' 'Sho!' +he say. 'When Ah thinks o' dis hyuh ole wuk, Ah reck'n Ah don' blame +him none.' Den he tek me down tuh yo' place fo' dee clo's en +things--walkin' erlong wid me jes' lak Ah been yo'-se'f. 'Moughty lot +er folkses sorry yo' Marse Harry ain' erbout no mo', Jube,' he say. +'Speakin' o' dat,' he say, 'dahs one o' dem ar' folkses, Ah reck'n, +comin' down dee street dis minute!' Ah looks up en Ah sees er moughty +pretty young lady, tall en white lak er big lily. 'Dat Miss Echo +Allen,' he say." + +Harry turned away abruptly and looked out of the open doorway. His +face had paled. + +"Marse Brent tek off he hat, en he say, 'Miss Echo, what yo' reck'n dee +las' spectaculous news is? Harry Sevier been up at ole Blue Mount'n +all dis yeah!' Well, suh, seems lak dat lady so s'prised she mos' +faint right on dee spot. Den dee colah come back in huh cheeks en she +laugh--moughty happifyed laugh, but somehow, et got er little cry en it +too, sumwhah. She look at me, en huh eyes jes' de coloh o' er +cat-buhd's aig. 'Dis 'yer Jubilee Jim Sandahs,' Marse Brent say, 'whut +cook fo' Sevier's outfit up dah, en he also er numbah one nuss, kase +dee young loafah ben sick. Bet yo' ben ovah-feedin' him, Jube.' Miss +Echo she walk down dee street wid we-all, clar tuh yo' house. Ax how +yo' is now, how yo' look, is yo' got thinnah--fifty hundud things she +ax erbout. Ole Jube he sho' reck'n dat lady think er pow'ful sight o' +yo', Marse Harry!" + +Harry choked back an exclamation of misery. Every word had been like a +hot needle thrust into a quivering nerve. Her face, with its ivory +clearness, under its wonderful whorl of red-gold hair--her eyes deep as +sky-mirroring pools in late sun-light--her laugh, her voice! He +suddenly seemed to feel the actual touch of her hand in his, as vastly +sweet as the shadow of rose-leaves. + +"Marse Harry," said Jubilee Jim, humbly, "dee ole man don' know whuffoh +yo' come hyuh dis time, er whuffoh yo' so long 'way f'om home. Ain' +mah biz'ness, Ah knows. But dee mount'n ain' no place fo' folks tuh +stay, cep'n fo' ole Jube whut lib hyuh allus. En Marse Harry, down dah +in dee city, ev'y one jes' waitin' en watchin' fo' yo'. Marse Brent, +en ... en dee pretty lady, en all!" + +There was a long silence. At last Harry turned from the doorway. + +"Thank you, Jube," he said in a low voice. "Now--tell me about Aunt +Judy." + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVII + +THE CALL + +In the big living-room, now flooded with the mountain sunshine that +streamed in through the open door, Richard Brent leaned to knock the +ashes from his pipe against the end of the hewn bench on which he sat. +Then he looked up at Sevier standing in front of the empty fire-place. + +"Well," he asked, "what do you think of it? How's that for a chance, +eh?" + +Sevier nodded. One hand was tugging at his dark beard, the other was +clasping and unclasping nervously behind him. "The new organisation +can't win, of course," he answered quietly. "Politically speaking it's +too young, and it lacks leaders. But it can make a strong showing, I +should think." + +Brent laughed as he explored his capacious tobacco-pouch. "Especially +if the platform is built wide enough." He pointed to a newspaper he +had brought with him, that lay beside him. "That editorial of mine +hits the nail squarely on the head. There is one issue and only one +which will draw in all the elements opposed to the party that now +rules--that is the liquor issue. That _must_ go in!" + +A quick gleam crossed Harry's face. None but he knew what liquor had +done for him, no eye but his might see the pitiful trail it had dragged +across his burnished life! + +Brent laughed again. "It's strange that they don't see it!" he said. +"Can't they deduce anything. Look at the growth of similar movements +in other states. Do they really believe that any genuine +good-government party can sit in the same saddle with John Barleycorn? +That's why the thing has always failed in the past--compromise, +temporise, fusion. Fiddlesticks! why can't they take the bull by the +horns? They would, too, if there was some one who would crystallise +the thing in their minds." He shot a keen side-glance at Harry. "When +you made that Civic Club speech last year," he said shrewdly, "I picked +you for the Peter the Hermit of the new Gospel. And then, confound it! +you bury yourself in the wilds up here, while every one thinks you've +gone abroad, and I have to pack my rheumatic bones twenty miles on an +infernal burro, to dig you out of your shell!" + +Harry's eyes had been absently fixed on the spread-out newspaper. +Something in the other's words, in his manner, caught him. A colour +came to his cheeks. "Dig me out of my shell?" he repeated. "What do +you mean by that?" + +Brent looked at him intently for a long second. During the past year +he, like others, had wondered at his friend's long absence. At first +he had put it down to natural need of vacation and the other's failure +to communicate with his friends had seemed significant of no more than +the mild eccentricity which had always flavoured his actions. Only +later the thought had come to him that Harry's absence might be due to +an affair of the heart. This to him had pointed unerringly to Echo +Allen, and conviction had leaped to a certainty on the day when he had +seen her reception of Jubilee Jim's news of Harry's whereabouts. Had +it been a lovers' quarrel? he had wondered. If so, and she had sent +him away, she had repented of it, that was manifest. The news of +Harry's whereabouts, in his mind, had dovetailed with his knowledge of +the political situation and its need of leadership, and the second day +thereafter had found him on horseback, following the difficult trail to +Harry's mountain eyrie. He had come to grips now with his errand. He +sat suddenly upright. + +"Sevier," he said, "you've got to do it. You are the only one who can. +You've got to speak at that convention on the seventeenth and nail that +plank into the platform hard and fast!" + +Harry made a quick gesture, then left the fireplace and began to stride +up and down the room. During that silent, insistent gaze it had come +to him with a strange glow of excitement what Brent intended to say. +His heart was beating quickly, and a host of conflicting emotions were +rioting in his mind. The allusion to his speech of a year ago had +brought a throb of the old ecstasy of power--that power which he knew +was his now, and in greater degree. If he only might use it for this +good purpose! + +Brent, looking at him, uncrossed his long legs with a smile. "I +agree," he said, "that we may not be able to win this time, but it will +start it off right, and it will be a good fight. I'll bet you what you +like that within a week--if that plank is rightly hammered in--the +Good-Government Clubs all over the State will be wiring allegiance!" + +He got up, his lank, nervous figure braced with interest. + +"And what if we do lose this Governorship? It will be the first real +nail in John Barleycorn's coffin in this State!" + +Sevier had sat down on the blanketed couch. His gaze went past the +eager face before him and lingered on the sweet, warm world outside, +with all its suggestions of new growth and virile strength. But what +he really saw was very far away. Was he a poor coward then, to shrink +from a woman's smile, a woman's eyes? He put his face in his hands. +Possibilities were beckoning to him, dead things springing up alive, +old longings, ambitions, appetences plucking at him. + +For a time Brent did not speak. He had turned away and stood in the +sunny doorway, looking down the trail. At length he faced about. + +"Sevier," he said quickly. "What do you say? Will you do it?" + +Harry looked up. The colour had faded from his face, but it was alight +with a new energy and resolution. The call had found him, and at that +moment the harrowing dread--the problem itself, which had shown so +imminent--seemed to have grown dim, to have drawn into the far distance. + +"Yes," he answered slowly, "yes, Brent. I will come." + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVIII + +THE CHALLENGE + +Looking back upon that day, Sevier was often to wonder whether indeed +he had missed Fate's purpose, and blinded by a personal ambition, had +set its plan at naught. For that instant's decision was to prove the +key to a series of fateful doings which bore him on, irresistibly, into +a line of action from which, deliberately, he must have shrunk. + +But having set his hand, it was characteristic of him that he did not +falter. It had required resolution to put Echo and his relations with +her into the background, but he accomplished even this, and he allowed +no thought of possible complications to affect his mental serenity. +His face was composed and determined as he descended from the train, at +dusk of the sixteenth, at the familiar city station, to find--as Brent +had arranged--his motor waiting for him, with Bob, his chauffeur, +wearing a broad grin of welcome, at its door. So pleasantly habitual +it all seemed, so sharply remembered was each sight and sound as the +car sped through the glimmering traffic, that almost he could have +believed the past year, full as it had been of pain, a vacuous dream +and that no hideous hiatus had lain between the then and now. + +He was sensible for the first time of the intense mental strain he had +been labouring under since his sluggish prison routine had opened into +this dubious freedom--the tension of his struggle, the instinct of +impending catastrophe, and the ghastly doubt of himself where Echo was +concerned. The lassitude and inaction of the Bungalow had added to +this strain. The relief now of movement and action brought surcease, +and a feeling of present confidence, if not of definite security. +Before he reached his apartment, he was sufficiently himself to give +the welcome he received from Aunt Judy and from Suzuki a feeling of +usualness. Brent, with two or three others who saw eye to eye with +him, so far as the exigencies of the political situation were +concerned, spent a part of the later evening with him and the talk +furnished the final tonic--if any had been needed--to brace him for the +task that awaited. That night, for the first time in many months, he +slept the deep, fortifying sleep of utter and dreamless unconsciousness. + +With the morning he felt no misgiving or shadow of self-doubt. His +mind temporarily was clear and untroubled, all of the vexing problem +was pushed, by the singleness of his purpose, into the unknown future. +By his express wish, his arrival had not been published, and, except +for a few of its leaders with whom Brent had conferred, the circles of +the convention, then in session in the biggest auditorium the city +boasted, were no more aware than were the hosts of his friends, of his +coming. He spent the morning alone in his room, sitting movelessly +hour after hour, marshalling his ideas, assembling his forces, stirred +as he had never before been stirred by the quick suggestion of a living +issue and an unrivalled opportunity. + +He lunched quietly alone with Brent in a private room at the club, and +immediately afterward drove with him to the hall. Throughout the +morning the platform had been under discussion; the debate was now +about finished. It was the psychological moment for his effort. + +As Harry stood silent before the sea of faces, in the instant that +followed his recognition and introduction, he was conscious of a tense +and vital concentration that swept from him the last vestige of +self-consciousness. With his first measured words, too, the outline +which he had pondered during the morning vanished utterly from his +brain. He remembered nothing save the one thing he had come to do, saw +with his mind's eye only the monstrous evil against which he stood. + +Words came to him in a flood--words magically compelling, that burned +and quivered in their intense appeal. For an hour he held the interest +of the great assembly as no orator had done, sketching with hard and +pitiless directness the ramifications of the grim traffic that blasted +whatsoever it touched, that knew no social bar, before which the +magnate's mansion and the labourer's tenement were as one, against +which no bolt or chain--save it be one wrought by the law of a +Sovereign Commonwealth--might avail. + +In his words was no tang of the study, none of the didactic methods of +the arm-chair student, no array of statistics. What he expressed had +been seared upon his soul, in inextinguishable letters and as he spoke +shooting pictures etched themselves as if on some quivering panorama in +his brain: he saw the black bottle in the wall-cabinet of his inner +office--the hidden sanctuary where he had signed away his talent and +linked his years to the demon of remorse: he saw the representative of +the great Corporation, whose power flowed from that traffic, holding in +his merciless hand the happiness of a woman that had been dearer than +his own life: he saw the cringing hatred in the eyes of Paddy the +Brick, the furtive drink-lined faces of the jail corridors. And in his +passionate denunciation, he called upon those who heard him to do their +part to rid the state of its Master and to set it free. Lastly, in a +peroration which carried all before it, he pictured a community from +which the unendurable stain had been forever wiped away, the pitfalls +of its youth filled up, the shame of its prisons lightened--a community +ruled no longer by King Alcohol, but by the Genius of the Home, to +which freedom no longer stood for ribald license and self-harm, but for +the Common Good. + +He stopped amid a dense silence--the truest tribute to real +oratory--then with a great burst, the storm of approval came. + +It filled the hall with electric feeling, surging in waves that +overtopped all decorum and made the hour significant and momentous. +Near him Harry saw the party leaders, among them Judge Allen, +newly-elected President of the Civic Club; they showed a singular +self-assurance overlaid by vivid excitement. In the galleries were +banks of feminine faces, tier on tier, merged in a tumultuous +hand-clapping like silver rain. Below, the house was on its feet, a +sea of waving flags and handkerchiefs. + +The tumult swelled, then died away to pulsing band-music and in the +subsidence, Brent leaned over Harry's shoulder to give him the quick +pressure of a hand--words could not have said so much. + + +It was not until the convention had adjourned for an hour's recess that +Harry could escape from the congratulations that poured upon him where +he sat. While he spoke, the sense of mastery and domination had +possessed him; now he was feeling the inevitable revulsion, and with it +came the fading of his confidence and the relifting of the old +sickening question. + +It had surged back before the applause had died away, the moment he had +released his mind from the clamping resolution of his purpose, +springing upon him like a cunning enemy who had dogged him in the +shadow. His roseate speculations of the Bungalow seemed now but hollow +wraiths that had mocked him with an unrealisable promise. Could he +ever for a moment have cheated himself into forgetfulness of the +_impasse_ that lay there? + +With Brent beside him, he pushed his way to the foyer. There the press +was thickened and they were blocked in a corner by the stream of people +pouring from the galleries, from which position Harry found himself +nodding across to enthusiastic greetings of old acquaintances. + +"Good heavens!" fumed Brent, impatiently. "We'll never get out at this +rate. Let's try the other door." Harry turned with him, seeking a way +through the diminishing crowd. Then, abruptly he stopped. Near at +hand, her side-face turned toward him, was Echo. Her delicate colour +was heightened by an unwonted flush and her eyes shone softly under the +curling golden waves of her hair. + +Gazing in a confusion that was almost panic, Harry felt, with a burning +sense of helplessness and cowardice, the impossibility of his position. +The sight of her was like a cooling stream to a famished wanderer in +the desert. It called to him with a thousand voices, lifting before +him every sweet reminder of vanished things. She had not yet seen him, +and as the crowd swept her slowly closer, he felt to the full his own +blindness and egregious self-assurance that had made this plunge into +the old current seem possible. He watched her with a fascinated +intensity. She was speaking to some one beside her, her glance +wandering. It shifted, then was raised, as if by very attraction, to +his face. + +He saw recognition spring across it like a shaft of sunlight, as with a +quick impulse she started forward--then her arm caught itself, as it +were, half extended. He felt himself chill in every nerve, the air was +breathless. Mechanically his hand touched hers. + +"You have been gone a year," she said, in a low, uneven voice. + +Harry's very thought seemed suspended. "Is it--so long?" he answered. + +He scarcely knew what he said: the reply was a mere involuntary +expression of habit, a conventional phrase to fill the moment's need. +He could not know that the very repression with which he was holding +himself against the quick thrill of her touch made the words lifeless +and inconsequential. + +To Echo, however, in the tremulous gladness that had filled her at the +knowledge of his return, and the exaltation of the hour, the reply, +deserved as at heart she felt it to be, was like a blow in the face. A +startled paleness swept up her cheeks like a wave, blotting their hue +and misting the clear April of her eyes. She turned half-away, toward +her companion, and the next moment the eddying crowd had come between. + +On the hurrying pavement Brent dropped his hand on Sevier's shoulder. +"I'm not going to congratulate you," he said. "I'm going to +congratulate the new party. I'm off to the sanctum to write my +editorial while it's red hot. You'll come back for the other session, +I suppose. They're liable to nominate to-night." + +"No," replied Harry. "I must get away from the crowd somewhere." + +Brent caught the lassitude of his tone. "Better walk yourself tired," +he counselled, "and then turn in. You'll be all right to-morrow." + +They clasped hands and parted. + +For a time Sevier walked aimlessly, choosing the less frequented +thoroughfares, alone at last to think. He had done his best. Whether +or not it would accomplish what Brent had hoped, he had made the +strongest effort of which he was capable. The meeting with Echo had +shaken him by its very unexpectedness, and had shown him how bitterly +hard was to be his struggle with himself. In that instant of their +encounter he had realised his own weakness. + +Through the long, fading afternoon he walked on and on, past the +outskirts of the city, on into the peaceful willow-green quiet of the +country, where paved streets gave place to meandering red roads and the +air was sweet with the delicate fragrance of blossoming fruit-trees. +He sat an hour on the violet-blurred grass above the silver-looping +river where he had often fished as a boy. All his life he had loved +that gold-tinted, dream-shadowed valley. But now the soft wild clamour +of birds, the multifold perfume of the fields, the errant plum-petals +swimming in the breeze, the long-armed trees reaching out over the +darkling water, called to him in vain. He scarcely saw the far, blue, +hill-brushed horizon unfurl its pageant cloud-clusters to hide the sun, +where it hastened, in purple toga, to greet the soft-eyed night. + +What Spartan career had he been planning for himself? He loved her, +desired her, still. He realised it with a stab of self-contempt. And +loving her, could he see her day by day, meet her, talk with her--cold +and empty words meaning less than nothing--with his heart crying to +hers: "Thus far but no further! Because I loved you once I wear a +shameful brand on my forehead, but my arms may never enfold you, your +lips never lie on my lips, your heart beat against mine!--Never, never, +never!"--could flesh and blood be capable of this? Better to go, while +there was yet time, somewhere, anywhere, so it be out of her world. +Under the deep evening sky, a gulf of gold, he turned city-ward again, +still painfully absorbed with his thoughts--a dark tangle of anguish +and doubt and longing. + +As he neared his house speeding urchins were crying newspaper extras, +and more than once he heard his name in the shouted, dislocated +phrases. His speech! The swan's-song of Harry Sevier! + +He let himself into his apartment with his latch-key and wearily +switched on the lights. He suddenly remembered that he had eaten +nothing since noon and realised that he was wretchedly tired and spent. +A pencilled note, with the superscription in Brent's jerky hand, lay on +the table. He took it up and opened it. + +Then suddenly he gave an inarticulate cry of amaze--of actual fright. +He was staring at this message, written an hour before: + +_Anti-liquor plank adopted. You were nominated for Governor on the +first ballot at eight o'clock._ + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIX + +THE JAILBIRD + +To every man come portentous moments of decision so packed with fate +that all that his after life may hold of pain or joy, seen with the +clearer view of later knowledge, may well have hung upon the issue. +Harry's one greatest moment of crisis had been when he stood in the +doorway of Cameron Craig's house, with that midnight alarm pulsing +about him--when he had chosen the course that meant safety for Echo at +such bitter cost to himself. The moment when he confronted the blunt +fact of his nomination was wellnigh as significant. + +Such a possibility had never occurred to him. He saw himself now, +first with bewilderment, then with passionate resentment, in a +predicament as unprecedented as it was unescapable. He had not even +had the option of declining the nomination. By now his name, as the +new party's choice, was darting over the clicking wires to the remotest +borders of the country. How could he accept it? He, who might at any +hour, for all he knew, be faced with a charge from which (if, indeed, +flight still lay open) he must flee ignominiously, like a thief in the +night--which, in the eyes of the law, he was! Yet how evade the thing +thus thrust upon him? After his speech, in which he had championed the +new cause so ardently, could he throw ridicule upon the organisation, +make its leaders--men whom he had known and respected all his +life--laughing-stocks, throw doubt upon his own intentions, and make +his action of to-day show forth before all as a flamboyant bid for +popular applause, the gallery-appeal of a pitiful _flaneur_ and +attitudinarian, who had no mind to link himself with an inevitable +defeat at the polls? + +As Harry stood in the pleasant, lighted room, with Brent's pencilled +note in his hand, a strange thought obtruded itself to grow slowly over +his confused imaginings. Behind it all was there not the same wise +Intention whose outlines he had thought he distinguished in his bitter +prison experience? And was he, in faithless presumption, to deny that +over-rule, and vanish cavalierly into some sluggish back-current of +life? The same fate that had turned Paddy the Brick's pellet of lead +the single hair's-breadth that had saved him, perhaps, from the +scaffold, had rendered his enemy, at least for the present, incapable +of harming him. And this part of his problem belonged to the present. +Why had the cards so fallen, unless in that intricate Plan, it was +meant that he should now give his hand to this work? He had trusted +fate far--might he not trust it further? Though the party that had +called him to carry its standard into the fight was destined to +failure, it was working for the future, and some other campaign--long +after the worst that could befall had come to him--would bring its +principles success. He would have done his part! + +So, for good or ill to himself, Harry made his momentous decision, and +as if it had been a signal, at the same instant there came the quick, +insistent ringing of the telephone on his desk. + + +The next few days were days of ungrudging labour on Harry's part of +conferences with the state leaders--for Brent's prophecy had been +fulfilled and Good-Government Clubs throughout the state had placed +their local machinery in the new party's control. These earlier +meetings were, for the most part, in Harry's own apartment, or in the +library of Midfields, since Judge Allen was chairman of the Committee +on Organisation. On none of these latter occasions had he seen Echo, +nor, to his relief, had he met her elsewhere. He gave himself no +relaxation, bending all the energies of his reawakened being to the +task of detail, and the mapping out of the campaign which he was +entering. Whatever his apprehension and trepidation, he had learned +his real weight in the hour of his great speech and the sense of power, +linked with extraordinary and tangible opportunity, thrilled and +dominated him. + +There came an evening, however, after a day of more than usual +concentration, when he felt that he must relax. He had dined at the +hotel with some of the party's out-of-town lieutenants, but excused +himself early and chose to dismiss his motor and to walk home afoot, +craving the lightness and gaiety of the jostling streets and gleaming +windows. + +Presently he found himself passing a theatre-front and remembered that +Brent had pressed him to make one of a box-party there that same +evening. At the time he had left the matter open, pleading the dinner +engagement, but now it occurred to him suddenly that an hour of lights +and music would be welcome. It was the intermission after the first +act and men were flocking into the doors, chatting and laughing. The +spirit of frivolity attracted him and he entered with the rest. + +The orchestra was playing--a Bohemian medley of uneven harmonies and +wildly plaintive alternations, strung, as on a thread, on the +airily-fantastic _motif_ of Dvorak's _Humoresque_, and the pirouetting +music seemed to belong to the flippant and shallow yet alluring +interior, with its plenteous gold-leaf and dark blue draperies +embroidered in peacock-feathers--the breath of a life of laughter, of +careless amusement, of joy in the present. Harry felt his spirits lift +and lighten at the grateful slackening of tension which the _mise en +scene_ created, and he bowed and smiled easily when the audience +testified its recognition, as he followed the attendant along the side +wall, by a hushed hand-clapping which ran across the rows of seats. + +With his hand parting the rear curtains of the box, however, he halted +irresolutely--its occupants were Mrs. Spottiswoode, Brent, Lawrence +Treadwell and Echo. For an instant resentment stirred in him; he +guessed that Brent, albeit with the best intentions in the world, had +planned this meeting. Then he squared his shoulders and entered. In +another moment he had greeted Mrs. Spottiswoode and was bowing over +Echo's hand. + +The men had risen. "Here is the Candidate!" exclaimed Brent, laughing. +"Mrs. Spottiswoode was just about to make me a wager that you wouldn't +descend to such triviality." + +Pretty Mrs. Spottiswoode smiled as she closed her fan. "If I had, I +shouldn't begrudge the loss," she said. "You've missed the first act, +Mr. Sevier, but then openings are always dull, aren't they?" Treadwell +shook hands with him with frank friendliness. Politically he belonged +to the party in power, but his liking for Harry was sincere and of +long-standing. + +The lights in the house were fading and the orchestra had swung into a +soft and measured air. The rustle and chatter among the seats stilled: +the curtain was rising. After the few words of greeting, Harry dropped +into the vacant chair behind Echo's, in the rear of the enclosure. He +had a feeling that again a satiric chance had snatched the reins of +conduct from his hands. His unseeing gaze was set upon the crowded +tiers beneath, but he was conscious of nothing but that small, +delicately-shaped head like one in a Greek frieze, that clear-cut +profile softly tinged by the dim rose-lamps of the box, the clasped, +unringed hands, the lacy sweep of the pale evening-dress silhouetted +against the curtain. Beyond the range of his vision manikins came and +went upon the stage, speaking meaningless words. At the other side of +the box Mrs. Spottiswoode was whispering some humorous adventure to +Treadwell and Brent, whose heads were bent toward her. Everything else +seemed unreal and far-away, and he and Echo the only realities in a +chapter of banality. + +He became conscious all at once that her head was turned toward him, +and as though by magnetic compulsion his own eyes looked into hers. + +"I want to say something to you." The words were the merest whisper on +her parted lips, yet he heard. He drew his chair nearer till his bent +head was at her shoulder. "Yes," he said. + +Her lips trembled, but she spoke in a clear undertone, audible only to +him, which faltered the merest trifle: + +"I don't know whether--now--it makes any difference to you," she said. +"But I--I was not myself when I--wrote you that note, the day you--went +away. There was a reason why I--acted as I did. You--" + +The low voice failed. There had been in the hesitant words failing +pride and shame, mingled with the love that had been so long denied--a +revelation which welled from the pure, outspoken honesty of heart that +compelled it, demanding, at all odds, so far as he was concerned, +openness and understanding. The shaken voice, the tremulous lips, the +moon-soft fire of her eyes and the faint scent of her clothing, all the +sweet suggestions of her presence were crying aloud to Harry, tempting +him with a vision of promise. What if she had failed him--then? What +if that courage he had dreamed, put to the touch, had shown but +cowardice, that love of him a secondary thing to her? She was what he +wanted--to yield himself to her arms as a swimmer to the sea! As much +as she loved any one--save herself--she loved him! Was not a half loaf +better than no bread? The icy barrier of reserve which he had reared +crumbled down, and he felt the thing he had tried to imprison leap up, +savage and not to be denied. His groping hand went out and touched her +arm. + +"Echo!" he whispered hoarsely. "Echo--" + +His voice died in his throat. Her hands in her lap held the theatrical +programme, and words in heavy black-letter--the title of the +piece--were staring up at him from the white paper-- + + THE JAILBIRD + +In the shadow, he felt his limbs suddenly trembling. With a kind of +fascination his gaze, for the first time since his entrance, lifted to +the stage. + +It was set as a long flagged corridor of vertical steel bars, into +which doors were let at regular intervals, and behind each door showed +a bare, forbidding room, furnished with two iron cots, one above the +other, and two wooden stools. As he gazed in consternation, a bell +clangored and along the corridor came tramping a line of men clad in +dingy stripes, pallid face close to shabby shoulder, one knee rising +and falling to the damnable rhythm of the prison lock-step. + +Harry felt an algid chill creep over him. He sat upright, his whole +body rigid, each detail of the significant picture stamping itself upon +his quivering perception. Midway of the line a turnkey unlocked a door +in the barred wall and two links of the human chain detached themselves +and entered--one stooped and crafty and cringing; the other clean-cut +and erect with no stamp of vice upon his face. The clanging bolt shot +home, the line moved off. Then, in the silence of the house the comely +figure leaned against the bars, and John Stark's voice--or was it his, +Harry Sevier's?--cried in broken agony: + +"And I am innocent--innocent!" + + +As the curtain descended on the act, amid a crash of orchestral music, +Mrs. Spottiswoode turned to Harry with a little shrug. + +"It _is_ moving, really, isn't it? But how _terribly_ unnatural! Of +course in real life nothing like that could happen to an innocent man. +What do you think, Mr. Treadwell?" + +But Treadwell did not answer at once. He had turned in surprise to the +rear of the box, where a youth in a grey silver-buttoned uniform had +parted the curtains. The messenger was looking at Brent, who rose and +went to him. + +"I beg pardon, sir," the boy said in a low voice, "but they told me at +the box-office you were here. Will you please come over to the club? +Something is the matter. Perhaps Mr. Sevier will come too." + +Brent looked at him--there was agitation in the youthful face. He +turned. + +"Will you ladies excuse Sevier and me for a few minutes?" he said. "I +dare say we shall be back before the curtain goes up again." + +At the words Harry had risen also, with a quick relief at this summons, +whatever it was, that offered the instant escape. Though his bow took +in Echo, he did not look at her, as turning, he followed Brent quickly +from the box. + + + + +CHAPTER XL + +GENTLEMEN ALL + +Chisholm Allen had come to the end of a long tether. He was drunk. +Not with the amiable jollity of the youthful tippler, nor with the +heavy, fatuous oblivion of the sot, but with the drunkenness that marks +the vicious rebellion of the nerve-cell against the prolonged +excitation of an intoxicant--the dreadful revenge wherein the outraged +brain summons the distorted imagination to fill the victim's landscape +with uncouth and demoniacal visitants. + +For a long fortnight, at the Springs, with a couple of cronies, he had +defied convention and strained the tolerance, which had countenanced +past escapades because he was an Allen, to the breaking-point. Only +when revelry had sunken to deep debauch had friends been able to bring +him to the city, where he had been bestowed in a room at the club to +await returning soberness. That night, however, when the friendly +guard had relaxed, Chilly had awakened to horrid visions. At first he +had known them for creations of his drunken fantasy, but they had +multiplied in numbers and horror till they had broken down the frail +bulwark of remaining reason and obsessed him with the sense of +reality--uncanny nightmares from some formless abysm, shuddering +mistakes of nature, mingling in a monstrous extravaganza that crowded +about to menace him. + +With a scream Chilly burst from the room and ran along an upper +corridor to the brightly-lighted reading-room. It was deserted at that +hour--but not for him, for the visitants from which he fled pursued him +there! They ringed him about, clutching at him. Livid and shaking, he +seized a heavy iron poker from the hearth and crouching in a corner, +beat off the imaginary assailants. + +It was upon this spectacle that the agitated steward had come, called +by a frightened bell-boy, and as the theatre stood opposite, he had +hastily sent thither, as the likeliest spot in which to find some +_habitue_ of the Club who might assume charge of the situation. + +Two other club-members stood nonplussed and disconcerted on the +threshold of the room when Harry Sevier and Brent entered, with the +steward behind them. In the livid face of the boy at bay, the staring +distempered eyes, the gripped, impromptu weapon, Harry read the fact. +He spoke to him soothingly, but the frenzied brain did not recognise +him. To Chilly's imagination the friendly, familiar faces took on the +baleful character of the gibbering things by which he was beset. He +sprang up, slashing frantically with the iron, panting +indistinguishable words. Thus for a moment the writhing images fell +back--only one of the iron lizards that formed the andirons suddenly +came to life and on bat's-wings soared to a great marble bust that sat +on a shelf above the fireplace, where it perched and spat down at him. + +Chilly leaped up at it, dealing it blow after blow with the poker--then +laughed wildly to see it suddenly waver and topple forward. So it +seemed to him, but an exclamation of dismayed warning broke from +Harry's lips; it was the heavy marble itself, its too frail support +shattered by the attack, which was falling. He sprang forward. + +But he reached the spot too late. The great bust came crashing from +its height full upon Chilly's breast, and with a choked cry he went +down beneath it. + +The others rushed to him and between them the massive stone was lifted +from the broken body. "Call up a doctor," Harry ordered the steward. +"Get the nearest--tell him to hurry; Mr. Allen is badly hurt." To the +rest he said, "Nothing must be known, as to how this happened, outside +this room. It was an accident, remember, nothing more. The shelf was +weak and the bust fell." + +When the doctor came in, the crushed form lay upon a couch hastily +improvised from chair-cushions. Blood was welling from the pale lips. +He made a hasty examination, then looked up and shook his head. + +"Better fetch his father and mother," he said, "and as quickly as +possible." + +"I will go," volunteered Brent. "My car is at the theatre. I can do +it in twenty minutes." He went out quickly, while the man of medicine +opened his case and busied himself with restoratives. + +To Harry, who stood watching with the others, it seemed that these were +to be of no avail, but after a sensible interval Chilly opened his +eyes. He gazed at the professional face so near--at the other shocked +countenances grouped about. He saw the bust lying on its side. + +"I'm--sober now," he gasped. "I was--seeing things, eh? But I seem to +be--hurt. What's the matter?" + +"The marble fell and struck you," said Harry. + +A spasm of pain caught Chilly and he groaned. "I remember," he said, +and then, after a pause, "Am I--badly off?" + +"I'm afraid so," said the doctor. + +The pity in the tone conveyed its message. A tremor ran over Chilly's +face. There was a long moment's silence. + +"Have I--much time?" + +"Not very much," answered the other gently. + +Chilly caught a breath that was half a sob. "Poor little Nancy!" he +whispered. + +He looked up at the men who stood about him, "I would like--" he said, +hesitatingly but clearly, "I would be glad if some--explanation might +be made of this--occurrence--which would not involve unnecessary pain +to the Duchess. Perhaps that is--impossible. But I would--be +grateful--" + +One of the younger men leaned beside him. It was Lee Carter, his +closest friend, who had brought him that afternoon from the Springs. +"Dear old chap!" he said, brokenly. "I was standing just under it. +You saw it topple and jumped to save me! That is how it happened! +Every one of us saw it." + +A wan smile touched the whitening lips, "Gentlemen all!" said Chilly, +and closed his eyes. + +He lay silent then--he was breathing with increasing difficulty. At +length there was the sound of a motor halting outside, and Harry and +the rest went out. + +In the quiet of the room the door opened upon Judge and Mrs. Allen. +She was deadly pale, her face frozen with anguish. She knelt beside +the prostrate figure and took the cold hand of her son in hers. + +"Chilly!" she cried. "My poor, poor boy!" + +His eyes opened. He seemed, in that last fading instant, to see only +her. "Duchess!" he whispered, and with the word the light died in his +face. "Duchess!" + + +Mrs. Allen looked at the Judge's quivering countenance with dull blank +eyes, that saw two great tears suddenly detach themselves and roll down +his pale cheeks. He took a step toward her. + +"Charlotte--" he stammered. "Charlotte!" + +There was in the shaking voice something that pierced her agony, a tone +that she had not heard on his lips for many, many long years--an echo +of accents that she had known when she was a bride. She gazed at him +an instant voicelessly. + +Then all at once her face broke up and a wild cry tore itself upward +from her heart. It was not the voice now of cold and placid scorn, but +that of the real woman--the eternal voice of Rachel weeping for her +children. The sword of overwhelming tragedy had stripped off the +protecting cicatrice of pride and arrogant resentment and bared the +lonely soul beneath, that in this shuddering instant groped wildly for +human comfort. + +The Judge bent down and clasped her, and there, above the body of +Chilly, for the first time since the son who lay dead before them had +been born, she lay in her husband's arms, her face turned against his +breast. + + + + +CHAPTER XLI + +DARK DAYS + +"If I only knew!" That was Echo's mental cry in the long days that +followed Chilly's burial. "If I only knew whether Harry cared for me +any longer!" Sharp as was her grief for her brother, this pang was the +sharper, and it did not dull with time. + +After the meeting in the corridor of the Convention Hall, when the +barrier had risen, so icily cold, between them, she had been unable to +blame him. The very depth of his hurt and resentment only showed her +how much he had once cared, and she had longed fiercely for an +opportunity of speech with him, which, it seemed to her, must set all +right. This opportunity she had discerned in Brent's invitation to the +theatre, since he had let fall that he had asked Harry also. She had +known the character of the play to be presented and otherwise would +have shrunk from the painful memories it must evoke, even though her +personal dread had been exercised by the escape from prison of the +convict from whose plight had come her own pain of conscience. But the +possibility of Harry's presence had outweighed other considerations. +In that moment in the box, when his lips had spoken her name, when she +had felt his hand tremble against her arm, the ice had seemed about to +melt in understanding. For an instant her heart had leaped up with +glad certainty, only to drop to anguished slowness again at his sudden +stricken silence. + +"If I only knew!" Through the months of the early summer the question +sat incarnate by Echo's side. By night and by day it never left her. +She had no confidant, could have none. From this trouble her father +himself was barred. It was some relief that she had no longer to wear +a smiling motley, but could give her grief free rein, and there were +times when she wept till the very fount of her tears seemed to be +exhausted--when it seemed to her that all her life was darkened and her +love lay stark with its death-tapers licking the gloom. + +As time wore on, and her father threw himself again into the work of +the political campaign, she was mentally more alone than ever. There +were few of those old hours when she had been used to sit with him in +the dusky library; for this room had become, gradually, the habitual +meeting-place of the leaders, the clearing-house of county news, the +forum in which were discussed and decided the varying policies of the +struggle. Occasionally Harry took part in these gatherings--not often, +for he was now away during long periods, speaking in various parts of +the state. By the newspapers Echo followed his every step. He made no +speech that she did not read with eagerness and pride. She knew that +he was making a whirlwind campaign that had steadily increased in +vigour and effect as the day of election drew nearer, and that, however +the issues might fall, he was stamping his individuality deeply upon a +wide community. She thrilled with the thought of his success, and in +the unselfishness of her love, this was some recompense. + +She found a kind of comfort, too, in the realisation that the relations +of her father and mother had subtly altered. In her whole life she had +never witnessed the smallest discourtesy of word or deed between them, +yet there was now a positive element in their intercourse which she had +never distinguished. Often now they sat together as the Judge wrote or +scanned his reports, sometimes he discussed with his wife the phases of +the political situation and once--with what Echo realised afterward was +almost a guilty start--she had come upon them sitting in the lamplight +hand in hand. She had turned away to discover that her eyes had +unaccountably filled with tears. + +Most of all that sustained her spirits in this period were her talks +with Brent. Trained newspaperman and observer as he was, he had thrown +himself into the battle with all ardour. Day after day, in trenchant +editorials, he preached the Gospel of the new party, and many times he +swung his long legs down the Avenue for a cup of tea at Midfields. His +admiration for the fight Harry was making was immense and he found in +Echo a perfect listener, sympathetic and comprehending. + +And so the months passed till there remained but a fortnight before +election day, and so deeply had Echo's imagination entered into the +great issue, so intimately were all her thoughts engaged with Harry's +tangible success, that even the dread of Craig's recovery, even the +pain and puzzle of her heart, were thrust into the background. + +That evening she sat at the piano in the drawing-room, her fingers +wandering in long dreamy _arpeggios_, when her maid brought her a +letter. It was from Nancy Eveland. She opened and read it through, to +the postscript on the last page: + + +"The evening papers have a telegram from Buda-Pesth about Mr. Craig. +He left the hospital there yesterday. The operation was completely +successful." + + +She sat for some minutes with the paper held tight in her hand, with a +weird feeling that it was a warning, and when she tried again to play +her fingers stumbled into discord. + +It was long before she slept that night, and then the fear swooped upon +her in her dreaming. She thought it was her wedding-day and that she +was pacing up a church aisle, over rose-leaves red as blood strewn with +seed-pearls that had been her tears. Turned toward her were the faces +of her father and mother, of Chilly and of a myriad friends, who filled +every pew. At the altar Harry was standing waiting for her. But every +countenance wore a look of astonishment and trepidation, and she knew +that it was because the gown she was wearing was not white but black, +and her bride's veil of black crepe. This, however, had been necessary +because she had wished that Craig would die, and the wish had somehow +brought his death about. She thought she tried to explain this, in a +whisper, to Harry, but he shrank from her. She turned to the rector, +who had been ready, but as she looked at him, he took off his surplice +and dashed it on the floor, and she saw that he was really Craig +himself. Then the organ crashed and lights flared up about her and +Harry vanished and all that was left was Craig's face, sneering at her, +with a red blotch on his temple. + +She awoke in the darkness with a start, trembling in every limb--to +hear a lone hound howling from the stable. + + + + +CHAPTER XLII + +THE MENDED ROAD + +Dr. Ivany, the great Hungarian specialist, adept in the delicate +adventurings of brain surgery, ceased his examination and refastened +the light bandage upon his patient's head with a look of satisfaction. + +"But yes," he said, in his concise French, "it goes well. I release +you from my care, Monsieur. One thing, however, you must remember. No +excitation. No anger. No prolonged mental labour for some months to +come. Otherwise--the tiniest hemorrhage in the affected area--and all +my surgery could not undo the damage again." + +The spruce young secretary who stood at Craig's side translated. + +"All right," said Craig. "Tell him I'm much obliged." He shook hands +with the great man without emotion, and when the door had closed upon +the latter he got upon his feet. "Have you arranged the rooms at the +hotel?" + +"Yes, sir." + +"Then get me out of here. The sooner the better." + +A half hour later he was in a suite of the hotel. "Now bring me the +home papers," he commanded. + +"To-day, sir?" ventured the secretary. "Do you think you are strong +enough so soon--" + +"Do as I tell you," was the curt reply. "I was shot on the ninth of +May, last year. I want to begin with the tenth, and I want all of +them!" + +The secretary went into the adjoining room, to return presently with a +file of newspapers, stitched neatly together, their columns marked here +and there in blue-pencil. He laid the great tome down on the table. + +"That's all now," said Craig. "I'll call when I want you again. I'll +dine here." + +Alone, he drew a long breath. Then he set his teeth and a peculiar +expression came to his face. A year, and more, had been snatched from +his life--this had been told him when it had been evident that the +operation had restored his faculties unimpaired, and as soon as he had +recovered sufficient strength. Beyond this, however, he had been told +nothing: on this score the surgical authority had been adamant. So, +for weeks, denied even the presence of his secretary, he had been +constrained, albeit impatiently, to subsist on the merest assurances +cabled him from day to day that the interests which had been in his +charge were adequately cared for, and to compel his stubborn resolution +to patience. Now the embargo had been lifted; he was once more his own +master. And before him, in black and white, lay the record of that +vanished time, which to him was but a meaningless void thronged with +vague and inchoate images, the story of the ignominy and downfall of +the man who had tricked him and robbed him of the woman he desired! +The blood rose in his temples. His lips drew up from his clenched +teeth and his fingers twitched as he reached for the newspapers. + +There it was, the episode that excluded all else from his thought, the +sensational headlines running half across the front page--the story, +pieced together by the assiduous reportorial pencil, of the burglars +and the shooting, the unknown feminine visitor who had disappeared in +the confusion leaving no clue behind her, the arrest of the single +desperado, closing with the latter's confrontation with Craig himself. +An exclamation of satisfaction fell from his lips. He had said to Echo +that there lived no man who could say that he had lied--a boast that +had had a shameful aftermath. Yet he felt now no shade of remorse for +the black perjury that had fastened the attempted murder upon Harry +Sevier. Rather he felt disappointed that consciousness had failed him +a moment too soon, so that his own lips had not placarded the other to +his face. That joy had been denied him. + +He turned the leaves, searching avidly for the headlines which should +have flung broadcast the startling identification. The events of the +great world, the larger happenings that had plunged two Balkan States +into war and overturned a British Ministry, the loss of a great ocean +liner--even a senatorial inquiry into the methods of the Distillery +Trust--held no interest for him at this moment. His brain had linked +onto the past where it had dropped it, and the empty gulf had laid no +cooling fingers on his burning craving for revenge. + +But the thing he sought was not there. "_Prisoner Refuses to Make Any +Statement_"--"_Criminal Unknown to Police_"--"_Sticks Stubbornly to +Policy of Silence_"--as he read, a dull flush overspread his face. +Fools! Was it possible that he--Harry Sevier--known to a thousand folk +of a city a couple of hundreds of miles away, could hoodwink the police +by the silly subterfuge of a newly-shaven chin? The papers shook in +his vengeful clutch as he turned and turned, conning the progress of +the trial. It ended with the conviction and the sentence; thereafter +the headlines told of things of fresher public interest. + +For a long time Craig sat perfectly still, staring into the grate whose +fire-light danced in yellow shadows on the wall, with the page open on +his knees. He had won the first trick, and Harry Sevier had played his +lone trump of silence. But what of that? He was a jail-bird, chained +to a cell for twenty years. His absence from home would long ago have +raised a question, which in the end must become insistent. He, Cameron +Craig, could answer that question! His lips curved in a cruel smile. +And Echo? She had profited by the situation--Harry had borne the brunt. + +Her lover! A sinistrous rage caught him as he repeated the word to +himself. No softer thought of her now lurked in the bitter chambers of +his mind. She had mocked and fooled him and he hated her with the +still, cold hatred which the strong and evil man feels for the weaker +thing that defies him. Yet so far as she was concerned he was +helpless. He could not deny his declaration that he had not known the +woman in the library. Life was long and he knew the penalty that in +the south awaited the man who wantonly attacked the character of a +woman. All facts aside, his sober judgment told him that the act would +bar against him every social door that now stood open. + +But Harry Sevier was another thing. Harry Sevier, thief and +house-breaker? Harry Sevier, a midnight assassin? Harry Sevier, the +nameless convict in the State's Penitentiary? What a story! Fate held +its compensations, after all. Now he would be able to figure, first +hand, in the sensation that he should send sweeping over the south like +a lurid flame! + +He rose and set the newspapers on the table, parting the leaves further +along, now that his main craving had been satisfied catching glimpses +of other things: movements in the business world, and the new political +alignment, the danger of which, to the interests with which he was +identified, he had long ago discerned. So the Civic Club following had +become a full-fledged party now--was reaching out toward a state-wide +organisation! + +Suddenly his gaze fixed itself and he bent over the page staring +unbelievingly. A hoarse ejaculation broke from him. What he saw was +the line, in inch-high letters-- + + HENRY SEVIER FOR GOVERNOR! + + +He snatched up the file again and held it to the light. There was no +mistake! Three months ago, while he had lain inert in the hospital +above the river, the man he imagined the occupant of a prison-cell had +been nominated for the highest office in the Commonwealth, the +standard-bearer of the New Ideal! + +For an instant a keen trepidation darted through him. His hand went up +and touched the bandage. Could it be that he was--not himself? Was +what he had imagined only the figment of a brain astray? With a fierce +effort at self-control he sat down and beginning at the date at which +he had left off his reading, began to scan the columns carefully and +methodically, missing nothing. + +For two hours he did this, and at length he came upon a paragraph at +which his lowering face lightened with exultation. It chronicled in a +dozen words the escape from the Penitentiary of the convict who was +under imprisonment for the burglary of the Craig mansion and the +shooting of its owner. The circle of evidence closed up. He was +certain, now. + +Craig laughed out loud, a grating laugh of sardonic amusement. Again +the cards had fallen Harry Sevier's way. By some lucky chance he had +freed himself, and with the effrontery of supposed security had resumed +his old place and character, no one the wiser. Now he was actually +running for Governor! Well, the higher the pinnacle the more +spectacular the fall! The game was his, Craig's, for he held the +highest trump! + +He rang for his secretary. + +"Bring me the steamer-lists," he said, "and have the servants pack my +things. We are going to leave on the Nord-Express at midnight." + + + + +CHAPTER XLIII + +THE PITFALL + +"So you think it incredible, then!" + +Lawrence Treadwell's glance at Craig was veiled as he replied, dryly: + +"I am considering the evidence as you present it, that's all. This, it +seems to me, is what it amounts to: Mr. Henry Sevier, a reputable +citizen and a well known resident of this place, a year ago leaves for +a vacation." + +"In disguise," interrupted Craig. + +Treadwell shook his head. "There is no evidence of that--it is mere +allegation. He was seen here late one afternoon, as usual. There +could be no mistake, for he's a characteristic enough individual. He +had arranged for the closing of his office, had told his clerk, in +fact, that he was going abroad. The same night, at midnight in your +own house--two hundred miles away and in another state--a man is +arrested, one of a gang of burglars. There were all the usual +earmarks--open safe, black mask, an attempt at escape, with the +shooting of yourself thrown in." + +"I identified him an hour later, as soon as I regained consciousness." + +"As the man who had shot you--yes. Your identification went no further +at that time. And since then you have been able to give no evidence." + +"Until now," said Craig grimly. + +"The burglar," pursued Treadwell, "is tried. He is unknown to the +local police. He refuses to tell his name. Naturally! He has served +time before and has no hankering for a life-sentence under the +'habitual-criminal' act. He is sentenced to twenty years. After a +period of incarceration, he escapes, as jail-birds will, and is not +apprehended. Some months afterward, Mr. Henry Sevier returns from his +vacation and resumes his popular career. He is just now in the public +eye--very much so, indeed. Do you seriously believe a claim that the +two men are identical will hold water?" + +Craig had been staring at him from under his shaggy brows. Anger was +seething in his brain at the suspicion he felt was lurking behind the +other's matter-of-fact logic. "Then you believe I am the victim of +hallucination?" he asked, with forced calmness. + +"Frankly," said Treadwell, "I think for you to allege such a thing +openly would, at the very least, make you seem ridiculous. Man, don't +you see? You've had a shock--a brain injury. You've been through a +long period of mental illness, culminating in a major operation! Don't +you realise--" + +Craig struck his fist upon the table and his teeth snapped together. +"Look here, Treadwell," he flamed, "I'm as sane as you are, and you +know it!" + +"Of course, of course," agreed the other, in a mollifying tone. "But +why not let the matter rest awhile? Go down for a month to Old Point +and build up--" + +Craig's face turned livid. He got up, and lifted one clenched fist in +the air. + +"Think what you like!" he said, venomously. "Do you suppose I care +what any one thinks? I'll show you whether I'm right or not!" His +voice rose. "I'll drag him in the mud! Every man and woman in these +two states--yes, and in a dozen more!--shall know him for a scoundrel +and a robber! He dares to run for Governor, does he? The drunken +_poseur_! The damned hypocrite! He shall be jail-bird again and once +for all, when I am through with him! He shall lie and rot with a chain +and ball on his leg! He--" + +He stopped. A needled stab of pain had darted, like a bee's sting, +through his brow, beneath the bandage, and there flashed to him +suddenly the warning of the surgeon, on the day he had left the +hospital in Buda-Pesth: "...the tiniest hemorrhage in the affected area +and all my surgery could not undo--" + +He stood still an instant, breathing heavily. Then he caught up his +hat and turned to the door. + +Treadwell was looking at him curiously. The outburst had tended to +reinforce the suspicion that had already come to him as to the other's +mental condition. "What do you intend to do?" he asked. + +"I am going to the Penitentiary, the physical record of the prisoner is +there. I shall have it when I come back. I presume you would call +that evidence?" + +"The best--if the measurements proved identical with Sevier's. I +daresay he would be willing to submit to the test," Treadwell added, +thoughtfully. "--And then?" + +"The election is day after to-morrow. I shall wait till the polls have +closed, naturally, before I show him up. A convict, or one who has +served a penal term, under the state constitution, can hold no office +of public trust. I am advised that the new ticket is likely to win. +The Trust's candidate will be next in the running, and with Sevier out, +must be declared elected. Where will Sevier receive the returns?" + +"At Midfields, I imagine," Treadwell replied. "It's the committee +headquarters. Governor Eveland of your State is to be a guest there, I +hear. He's very much interested in this campaign, being something of a +reformer himself." + +"So much the better! The Governor himself shall ask for the warrant +for Sevier's arrest. We will go there that evening." + +"We!" repeated Treadwell. + +"Yes. You will come with me--as my attorney." + +"But I don't approve the step!" protested the other. "I consider the +whole affair preposterous!" + +"I am under the impression," retorted Craig, darkly, "that you are +still under my retainer--not Sevier's." + +Treadwell flushed. "If you put it in that way," he said stiffly, "I +shall of course accompany you. But you have my legal opinion." + +Craig jerked the door open. + +"I'll meet you at Midfields at eight that evening," he said. + + + + +CHAPTER XLIV + +THE LIGHTED FUSE + +In the Warden's office at the Penitentiary next morning--the same room +Harry Sevier had entered when he had first stepped under the gloomy +prison archway--Craig stood staring out of the open window across the +yellow courtyard. The last move in the game was at hand--the game he +had made up his mind now to play out alone, to the last card. + +He had not taken the Warden into his confidence, though he had sat +talking with him for a half hour. From him he had heard the tale of +the escape of prisoner No. 239--a tender subject with the official, but +one in which his influential visitor had exhibited a particular +interest. To the Warden the latter's concern for a scoundrel who had +come within an ace of murdering him seemed natural enough. It would be +in keeping with Craig's determined and vindictive character to exhaust +every effort to apprehend the fugitive. To some intention of this sort +the Warden had laid his caller's further inquiries concerning the +pickpocket who had been the missing man's cell-mate. + +Craig, however, had had reason of another sort. It had chagrined him +to learn that with the prisoner had disappeared the record-card on +which he had counted as a piece of tangible evidence. But this was not +an essential, since, once denounced, Harry Sevier would be put upon the +defensive, and the one conclusive and natural defence--an alibi--he +could not furnish. In the meantime, however, the sensational +accusation should be supported, and what more to this purpose than the +convict who had shared No. 239's very cell? Promise of a pardon--he +could arrange that with the Board--would make the fellow tractable, and +he could take him with him on parole. + +The plan in his mind had leaped into action. He had expressed a wish +to talk with Paddy the Brick and the Warden had sent for him. Craig +was waiting the man's coming now, as he stood looking across the yard +toward the vast round dormitory that tossed back the rumble of the +toiling shops. There was an evil gloating in the fixed, speculative +eyes--in imagination Craig was seeing Harry Sevier once more a denizen +of that dismal place, a felon, and irrevocably shamed now in name and +fame. + +The door opened and a turnkey entered, a figure in striped clothes with +him. + +"Here's your man, Mr. Craig," said the Warden. + +Craig turned from the window and set his eyes on Paddy the Brick. He +gave a sudden start which the Warden, who had crossed to his desk and +was searching in its pigeon-holes, did not see. Paddy the Brick shrank +back, and a quick gleam of fear ran across his pallid features. For +each--the would-be murderer and the man he had shot--in the self-same +instant recognised the other. + +At the fierce anger that blazed in Craig's face Paddy the Brick drew +further back, his eyes darting from the man by the window to the Warden +and back again, and his hand went instinctively out to the table to +clutch a heavy, brass-edged ruler the only weapon at hand. It seemed +at the instant that the other was about to leap upon him, to kill him +with his working hands. But Craig recovered himself in time. He +looked at the Warden. + +"I should like to talk with him alone," he said, "if that is +permissible." + +"Certainly," the Warden answered. "As long as you like," and left the +room with the paper he had been looking for. + +As the door closed, Craig bent a long look upon the man who stood +there. "Don't be a fool," he said. "Put that thing down. I'm not +going to hurt you. I want to ask you some questions." + +Paddy the Brick laid the ruler down, but he kept the table between them. + +"Did you know who the man was who broke into my house with you--the one +who was caught?" + +The other looked at him cunningly. "The one you swore shot you?" + +Craig's fingers twitched. "Yes," he said, after a pause. + +"No. I never saw him before that night." + +"What did he pay you for that job?" + +Paddy the Brick stared. "Good Lord! _He_ wasn't one of us. He just +happened in for a social call!" He leaned across the table. "Say," he +whispered, "what did you want to hang him for?" + +There was in the posture, the whisper, an inexpressible assumption of +identity of interest which stung and galled the man who faced him. The +blood welled into Craig's face, then very slowly ebbed. + +"Would you know him again, if he had changed his appearance? If, for +instance, he wore a beard?" + +"Know him!" Paddy the Brick jerked his thumb toward the window. "Why, +we was mates over there." + +Craig looked at him steadily for a moment without speaking. Then he +pointed to a chair. + +"Sit down," he said. + + +At midnight that night the home city of Harry Sevier was ablaze with +lights and throbbing with the last feverish activity of a strenuous +campaign. The candidate of the new party had returned that afternoon +from a tour of the southern portion of the state, and plenteous +bunting, everywhere displayed, testified to an enthusiasm that, +carefully fostered by his lieutenants, had permeated every section and +class. That evening, to ring down the curtain with a brilliant +_finale_, a torchlight procession had been organised. Ten thousand +strong, the blazing flambeaux had marched and countermarched along the +city's main thoroughfares, and Harry had reviewed them from the balcony +of the hotel which was the party's _rendezvous_. + +He had flung himself into the fight with every ounce of his splendid +vitality which had been deepened and strengthened by the months of +mountain solitude. There was infinitely more at issue now than he had +dreamed when he canvassed chances at the bungalow. The cause of the +new party had then seemed inevitably a losing one. But during that +long campaign--particularly in the last few weeks--it had been borne in +upon him that the time had been ripe for the venture. Long arrogance +and effrontery had borne their legitimate fruit in a profound +resentment that had been fanned to vivid life by the quickening breath. +There had been an erasure of old lines, and at length the party in +power, aroused and desperate, had found itself fighting for its life. +There were no odds offered that day on its victory! Once committed, +however, there had been no turning back possible. Harry's bridges had +been burned behind him. He could only go forward, and, fighting on, he +had striven to thrust his problem, with its increasing implications, +into the background of his mind. And in spite of himself the zest of +victory had absorbed him. To-night's parade had been an inspiring +spectacle and it had called from him the last speech of the campaign. + +As he closed, amid the shouting and applause, a motor drew up at the +curb and stopped just before the hotel entrance. On its fear seat, +shielded from the gaze of the pavement by the leather hood, was Cameron +Craig, and beside the chauffeur sat Paddy the Brick. + +The crowds thinned, began to melt away; here and there the golden +square of a window went black on the quieting street. Still the car +made no move. At length a little knot of men issued from the hotel +lobby, pausing in the lighted doorway to say good night to one another. +Craig leaned forward. + +"The one in the centre," he said, in a low voice. "The one with the +beard." + +As he spoke, Harry Sevier's look crossed the pavement and met squarely +Craig's envenomed gaze. He saw the heavy head thrust forward from the +hood, with the white bandage across the temple and under it the +smouldering, implacable eyes. For a space that seemed interminable the +eyes held each other. A ghastly expression crossed his face. Very +slowly he turned and re-entered the lobby. + +Brent, who was the last to leave him, looked at him anxiously. + +"You're about all in," he said. "You look positively ill." + +Harry tried to smile. + +"It's nothing. I think I'll rest now." His voice had all at once lost +its _timbre_, had become flat and expressionless. All the electric +force, the fire and enthusiasm, had faded from it. + +Brent held out his hand. "Thank heaven it's over--all but the voting!" +he said fervently. "It's the reaction, I suppose." + +"Yes," replied Harry, dully. "No doubt it's the reaction." + +He turned and went slowly to the elevator. + +In the automobile at the curb Craig touched Paddy the Brick on the +shoulder. "Well?" he asked. "Is he number 239?" + +Paddy the Brick looked at him with a white fury distorting his features. + +"I don't know whether he's 239 or not," he said, "but I'd swear to +anything that would 'fix' him! That's the lawyer that let them send me +up two years ago!" + + + + +CHAPTER XLV + +THE CHASM + +The elevator deposited Harry at the third floor, where was the suite of +rooms that he had occupied while in town during the campaign, as being +more accessible than his own apartment. The outer chamber of the suite +was set with all the paraphernalia of a committee-room, with a huge +writing-table and several small desks holding telegraph instruments +installed to receive the returns. To-morrow would find it humming with +excitement, but it was deserted now. He had given Suzuki, his valet, +the evening off. + +He shut the door and stood a moment leaning against it. His eyes were +blank, his face set. He had not known of Cameron Craig's journey +abroad, nor in the rush of the campaign had he seen the newspaper +paragraph which told of the success of the operation in Buda-Pesth. +But in the single look across the pavement he had leaped to the truth. +Craig had recovered his faculties--there had been full knowledge and +vengeful purpose in the haggard eyes. What he had dreaded, the +possibility which he had of late locked in an inner chamber of his +mind, had come to pass. All was finished! The Sword of Damocles was +about to fall! + +What remained? To creep away, like a dastard, he, the leader in the +fight? To fly, like the discovered thief, as he had once thought of +doing? Even that was impossible now. He knew his enemy too well to +suppose that he would have left that way open! The other was but +playing with him, like a cat with a mouse, till the moment came to +publicly denounce him. For with a kind of prescience he guessed +Craig's real purpose, to seize the climactic moment and abstract from +his humiliation the last ounce of sensationalism. + +All night, in the silent, empty apartment, under the brilliant lights, +Harry strode up and down--up and down tirelessly, his face white, his +hands clenched, confronting the blank wall that reared before him. +Temptation, in its most insidious form, fell upon him. Why should he +not brazen it out? After all, the burden of proof was upon his +accuser. He had destroyed the record-card which had held his physical +measurements. Jubilee Jim could be depended upon to swear to his +presence at the bungalow through the winter: wild horses would drag no +other story from his faithful lips. Simple and God-fearing as the old +negro was, love for his master was one of the prime articles of his +emotional and uncomplex religion. For that love he would +unquestioningly risk even the fires of the material hell of which his +Bible told him! Such an alibi would hold. What other proof could +Craig bring forward, further than a fortuitous resemblance, materially +weakened now by hair and beard, to a one-time convict in a penitentiary +in another state? + +Was he not doubly justified in this deception? He was really innocent. +If he foreswore himself a thousand times, it would be in the way both +of justice and expediency. It would solve the problem. The new Cause +needed him. Had he any right to fling himself away, merely in the +interest of fictitious truth, on the mawkish principle of "Thou shalt +not do evil that good may come"? + +Yet, to perjure himself! To know himself liar and hypocrite, even in +the hour when he should kiss the holy volume in the vows of a high +office? He who even in that past that had been clouded by egoistic +eccentricity and marred by dissipation, had always counted an oath +sacred! To bind that faithful servant on the mountain to a black +perjury--which would shadow his imagination with the smoke of the +eternal burning! + +There came to him suddenly the memory of words that had woven with the +fevered imaginings of his illness on the mountain--words of Jubilee +Jim's prayer: + +"Dey tek yo' darlin' son ... en put er crown o' tho'ns on he beautiful +haid, en he ain' done nuthin' 'cep'n good. Ah don' keer what Marse +Harry have on; Ah reck'n when he come lak dis, yo' gwine he'p me he'p +him--kase dat what he done fo' me!" + +The stumbling, broken accents seemed to strike across the void. What +if, instead of the great machine of recompense that he had +distinguished in that prison experience, there were indeed a personal +God, as Jubilee Jim believed, throned in his vast white heaven of +glory--a God pitiful for the agony of his human creatures. Would he +look down now and hear his cry for help? Harry flung himself suddenly +on his knees, and leaned his forehead against the dark wainscoting. He +knew that he uttered no word, but all his being seemed to resolve +itself into an inarticulate cry for aidance. It was the first appeal +of his life to something outside of himself, the first cry of human +weakness, groping in its utter hopelessness for the Infinite. It was +the last step of the long way Harry had travelled--from self-abasement +to remorse and awakening conscience, through struggle with appetite to +victory over himself, self-abnegation, acquiescence in the great law of +retribution, and finally, in his despair, to prayer. + +And out of the deep to which he had called, calmness at length came to +him, and with it a clear and steady purpose. As dawn took down the red +draw-bars of the sky to let in the day, he threw open a shutter and +stood looking down with aching eyes upon the drowsily-waking street. +There should be no lying denial, no cowardly evasion--nothing less than +the naked truth. If fate, if God, demanded this last thing of him--if +only so could he balance the account--he would not repine. He had +fought the fight, and at the last, so far as he could, he would keep +the faith! + + +Before the hotel had awakened, Harry was in his own apartment. He had +left a note for Brent, who was to be in charge at the hotel suite, +saying briefly that he should not appear that day, but would be with +the Committee at eight o'clock. He had sent the same message also to +Judge Allen. He told Suzuki to admit no one, disconnected his +telephone, and thereafter remained at his desk writing, a plate of +sandwiches at his elbow, bending himself to the final arrangement of +the details of his personal affairs, as he might have done, he thought +once, if by some clairvoyancy he foresaw that to-morrow he would die. +Death, indeed, would have been a welcome solution if by it he could +have bought extrication. Was he not going, living, to a worse death +than he should ever die? + +As the mantel-clock struck seven, he laid the last written paper in the +desk-drawer and rising, went into his dressing-room. He bathed and +dressed, the last time in his life, he told himself, that he should don +the evening habilaments of a gentleman--grave-clothes! For the blow +would not be delayed. To-morrow, no doubt, the state would ring with +his downfall. To-night--in the hour of his victory, if victory should +be his--he would write _finis_ to the final chapter and surrender +himself to the law. + +It was just at the half-hour when Harry opened the outer door of his +apartment. But he did not pass through. Three men had been waiting +silently just across the threshold. One of them was Craig. They +entered without a word, Craig shut the door and one of the others took +his stand before it. + + + + +CHAPTER XLVI + +CRAIG STRIKES + +Sevier had stepped back as they entered. He had not been startled at +the ambush; he had gone past surprises. He was conscious only of a +cold preparedness and a kind of dull wonder as to the form of their +errand. The purpose in Craig's face left no cause for any speculation +as to their intent. He looked at the other's two companions, perfect +types of the "heeler," burly and with brutally-cunning features, that +wore now a gloze of satisfaction in the work that was forward. They +were not in uniform--it was not an arrest, then. What did Craig intend +to do? He turned, set his hat on the hall table and passed into the +sitting-room. Craig followed him. Harry now saw that he carried a +compact bundle under his arm. He snapped the cord and disclosed a +costume--jacket and trousers of black and yellow-grey stripes and a +flat, peaked cap of dingy canvas. Around one arm of the jacket was a +leathern band which bore a metal number--239! + +"Put them on," commanded Craig shortly. "Over what you are wearing. +They'll be large enough." + +A painful mist was before Harry's eyes. He understood. Craig meant to +give him up stamped with the old felon character, clothed in the +unmistakable livery of the convict! Well, if not to-night, to-morrow. +What did it matter? + +As he drew on the loathsome garments, buttoning the jacket close up to +his chin, their very touch seemed to cling insupportably to his flesh. +The smell of the coarse fulled cloth in his nostrils gave him a qualm +as of actual physical sickness, and the feel of the canvas cap across +his forehead burned it like a brand. + +Craig had taken from his pocket a black cloth mask. "Now this," he +said. "I believe you wore one in your last burglary," he added with +cold malevolence. "I am disposed to miss no realistic touch, believe +me." + +Harry put on the mask, whose lower hem fell below his beard. Through +its eye-holes he looked evenly at the sneering, implacable face +opposite. A peculiar apathy had come to him. The wide +humiliation--even the cheap and ghastly sensationalism of the mask did +not touch him. Like the hapless voyageur caught in the rapids above +the great falls, he was watching the nearing brink with a kind of +fascination and with the roar of the cataract in his ears. + +One of the men had opened a window to peer down into the street. "All +clear," he announced briefly, and Craig went to the hall and opened the +door. + +A monster limousine with curtains drawn waited at the curb, and on the +front seat sat a figure at whose pallid face and red-rimmed eyes Harry +gazed without a start but with a strange sensation of fitness. Here +indeed was the real thief who had shot Craig, but leagued now with his +enemy to his undoing! + +Sitting in the dark interior, as the car sped along with its silent +company, Harry remembered another ride of two years before, when he had +flung through the night flying from his own conscience, incarnate in +the figure that now rode beside the chauffeur. Was he never to lay +that old ghost? He noted dully that the streets were jostling with +eager throngs which made compact eddies here and there before some +newspaper bulletin-board or flaring club-window which displayed the +reports of the voting, as, township by township, county by county, the +tally came in. On one the legend was being posted, "_Sevier Leads_," +and a muffled cheer was wafted after. He shut his eyes. Almost he +could have thought himself in the grip of some _outre_, high-coloured +dream--but he knew that it was no dream. + +The limousine slowed and stopped. Harry turned his head as the door +opened; they were at the gate of Midfields. + +As they neared the upper end of the drive, a man rose from the steps +and came toward them. It was Lawrence Treadwell. He started as if he +had been stung at sight of the masked and striped figure between its +stolid escort. He turned on Craig, his eyes blazing with amazement and +anger. + +"My God!" he cried. "You haven't dared--but this is infamous. It's an +outrage! You--" + +"Keep your place!" ground Craig. "I tell you I know what I'm doing!" + +"It's my private opinion you're as crazy as a March hare," retorted the +other, "but if you _are_ right, I'll have nothing to do with it, do you +understand? Nothing! I don't care _what_ your damned evidence is!" + +Craig turned his back on him and led the way up the steps, and after an +instant's hesitation Treadwell followed. Through an open window Harry +glimpsed the interior of the east room, dismantled now for the +evening's strenuous occupation, where several masculine figures were +grouped about a table, excitedly working over charts, and he could hear +the irritant buzz of the telephone as it signalled the bulletins that +were beginning now to pour into the busy hotel suite at the other end +of the wire. Craig did not ring at the big door but led the way along +the porch to a French-window, of the library, which stood ajar. He +peered into it, then with an exclamation of satisfaction motioned the +two attendants back, said a low word to Paddy the Brick at his heels, +and flung the window open. + +Sevier entered, Craig and his stool-pigeon next. Treadwell followed +and drew the window to behind him. + + + + +CHAPTER XLVII + +WITH HIS BACK TO THE WALL + +In the wide, lamp-lighted room into which this weird quartette had so +startlingly entered, before the capacious fireplace two men had been +sitting smoking--Judge Allen and his friend Governor Eveland. At the +sudden apparition both had turned sharply toward the window--two +strangely dissimilar figures: the Judge slight and spare and scholarly, +his pale, finely-chiselled features tinged in the glow; the other +deep-chested and powerful, of herculean mould, with a rugged face made +almost patriarchal by the long grey beard which swept his chest: both +countenances for the instant curiously alike in their expression of +shocked surprise. + +The Judge arose abruptly from his chair, his gaze shifting from the +masked figure in striped clothes to Craig's face, eagerly alight and +triumphant. He had no welcome for this summary entrance. + +"Who is responsible for this intrusion?" he asked coldly. + +Craig laughed. "I am responsible," he said. "I have business with you +both. For some time, as you are aware, I have been debarred from such +pursuits. However, I am now myself again, and free to pick up lost +threads. Hence my call to-night." + +"It can wait a more opportune time." The Judge spoke with asperity. +"Moreover, I must ask you to remember that I have servants to announce +my guests." + +"Apologies may be in order later," Craig returned, "if my errand does +not justify itself. My business with you is to inform you that you and +your friends have been giving countenance to a man whom the law is +tracking down--a convict who escaped from prison in the next state some +months ago. You see him before you." He looked at the Governor, who +had neither moved nor spoken--he had small liking for Cameron Craig. +"My business with you, Governor Eveland, is to demand that you call +upon the local authorities to arrest this jailbird, pending his +extradition to your own jurisdiction. I have brought with me, under my +personal surety, an inmate of the penitentiary"--he pointed to Paddy +the Brick--"who was this criminal's cellmate and who has identified +him." + +There was a slight pause before the Governor replied. He had shared +his host's irritation at the unceremonious entrance and this was +allayed by no regard for Craig, whom he had always reckoned an evil +influence in the activities of the state of which he himself was Chief +Executive. Now the pallid face with its bandage across one temple, the +distempered eyes and strange excitement, smote him with distaste. + +"I like neither your method nor your manner, Mr. Craig. This would +seem to be a matter for the police, not for me, nor, I take it, for +Judge Allen. Why you choose to drag this man here, at such a moment, +with this skulduddery of mask and stripes, I cannot imagine." + +Craig laughed again, sneeringly. "A little fancy of my own, and regard +for the dramatic proprieties..." + +Treadwell strode forward with an exclamation. + +"Judge--Governor Eveland!" he said explosively. "Let me say something. +I came here to-night purely in my capacity of Cameron Craig's attorney, +intent only on saving him from what seemed to me a piece of brazen +lunacy. But I begin to see that there is something behind this, and if +it isn't lunacy it is something I like still less. I withdraw here and +now from any connection with him or this action--" + +"Withdraw and be damned!" Craig flung him, savagely. "I know what I am +about!" His voice rose. "That man, Governor Eveland, is an escaped +prisoner from the penitentiary of your state! Tear off his mask and +see for yourselves who our 'John Doe' really is--this fine thief and +would-be murderer--the man who shot me down a year ago!" + +"Stop!" The Governor's voice rang through the room. He was on his +feet now, stern authority in every line of his posture. "Mr. Craig, +listen to me! You have thrust yourself here without warrant of right +or of invitation, in a matter which you--not I--have elected to make my +business. Very well: I take the affair and this prisoner into my own +hands. Do you understand?" + +He paused, his lips clipped to like shears. Craig's outburst, vicious +with suppressed fury, had given him a lightning-like glimpse into +something unguessed in the situation. The man before him, then, in +this convict dress, was the burglar convicted of that old shooting--the +prisoner whom he had seen at the court-house, and whose personality had +so attracted and puzzled him. Yet there was more beneath Craig's +attitude than an understandable desire to punish the man who had shot +him: more than that in those infuriate eyes, shaking hands and +malicious triumph. The Governor had a hatred of persecution. His mind +worked according to a law of stern and inflexible justice, yet to him +justice opened itself to no assault of man's passions. + +Under that holding look Craig sat down heavily, angry arrogance in his +face. Treadwell took a chair near him, and Paddy the Brick remained +standing in the background, his small eyes glancing furtively from one +to the other. + +The Governor resumed his seat and bent his deliberate gaze on the +figure that had been standing movelessly before him. A quick memory +had come to him of the other's face, now hidden, as he remembered to +have once seen it--clear-eyed, vivid and forceful, strangely lacking in +the ear-marks of the criminal, a face that had often recalled itself to +his mind since that day. He had no vulgar curiosity, but the patent +mystery in the background called to him strangely. + +"Are you, as this man alleges, a prisoner who some months ago broke +jail in the adjoining state?" + +"I am." The voice, muffled by the mask, was low but distinct. + +"The man who shot him in his library?" + +"No." + +The questioning, deep grey eyes looked steadily at the mask--it seemed +as if the gaze would bore through the cloth. "But you were found +guilty of that offence!" + +"I was convicted, yes." + +The Governor was silent a moment; then his hand reached for the pen on +the table. "On the admission, then," he said slowly, "it is my duty to +request the authorities to take you into custody. You are aware of +your rights under the law?" + +The striped figure bowed. "I am. I shall waive extradition. With +your permission, however, I should like to make a statement." + +"He can make that in the jail," interposed Craig contemptuously. "Take +off his mask and send for the police." + +The Governor frowned. "He can make it here and now, if he so chooses. +This is not your house, Mr. Craig. If you do not care to listen, there +will be no objection to your withdrawal--with your witness." + +There was a fleeting pause, in which a livid red mounted to Craig's +brow, dark against the bandage. Then the Governor turned. + +"Do you take your solemn oath that what you are about to say is the +truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?" + +"I do." + +The Governor leaned back in his chair. "You may make your statement," +he said quietly. + + +Harry bowed. He was feeling a chill sense of estrangement, as though +the bars that were so soon to shut him from the life of which he had +been a part had already fallen between him and his friends. But he was +oddly self-controlled. In the few moments he had been thinking +swiftly--not of himself, but of the cause he represented, the men who +had pinned their faith upon him and whom he had betrayed, whose leader, +Judge Allen, sat there now ignorant of the ruin that overwhelmed them. +To say to him, "I, Harry Sevier, whom you honoured, whom you made the +bearer of your party banner, reached forth for this trust knowing +myself a hunted man, outlawed of honest folk!" They were his friends, +his loyal comrades in the fight, men whose friendship had been tried +out by long years! In this last hour he shrank from a judgment biased +with sympathy, and a fierce craving was rising in him for a +justification based on no personal appeal. + +He took a step backward to the mantel and stood thus, a little removed +from them, looking from one to the other. He spoke in a low voice--not +the alert, vibrant voice of the old Harry Sevier, but one alien, +metallic, and strangely devoid of feeling. + +"What I have to say may soon be said. It was not of my own will that I +came here with covered face, and since this masquerade is not of my +choosing, it may serve its purpose a moment longer. You, Judge Allen, +know me well. Governor Eveland, you also are not unacquainted with me. +With every one in this room I have come in contact--not as a convict, +but as a citizen and an honest man. My association with you, Judge +Allen, has involved certain responsibilities, and these I have accepted +while I have lain under the law. For this I owe you a greater +reparation than I can ever make. I know that justification in the eyes +of the world is impossible, but in your own mind--in the minds of +others who stand with you--it perhaps may be given me. But a +justification is empty to me that springs from personal sympathy. I +want it as man to man. For this reason I keep on the mask a little +longer." + +He paused. The Governor had not spoken; he had settled back in his +great chair, one hand in his beard. The Judge was leaning intently +forward, his hands clasped; he had never taken his eyes from the +speaker, save once to glance at Craig, who sat with narrowed eyes and +heavy lips curved in a malicious sneer. Treadwell's elbow was on his +knee, his chin in his palm, his brows drawn into a frown that told +nothing, and behind all stood Paddy the Brick, furtively watching. + +When the striped figure spoke again, it was in a voice which held a +first thin thrill of feeling: + +"I have said that I lay under the law, but it was through that law's +error. I was unjustly accused and wrongfully convicted. I was +innocent." + +The Governor spoke, coldly and deliberately. "You were taken at +midnight in the Craig house." + +"I had entered it for no dishonest purpose. I broke no bolt nor +bar--that had been done before my arrival." + +"You allege, then, that you were not in company with the robbers?" + +"I was not. They were there when I entered." + +"Why did you not give the alarm?" + +"They made me their prisoner. A pistol was at my head." + +"You did not so testify at your trial." + +"I declined to testify at all." + +The Governor nodded. "That is true," he said. "I remember." + +There was a moment's pause, then the voice continued: + +"It is sometimes inevitable that the law, whose purpose it is to be +just, is terribly unjust. Sometimes the sole clue to a situation which +seems to spell inevitable guilt lies in a fact, small in itself, whose +significance is such that it cannot be brought forward. This was my +case. The fact which would have cleared me could not be told. I +became a convict. For six months I was an inmate of the Penitentiary. +Then--the way opened to freedom, and I took it. What man would not +have done so? I acknowledged no right of the law over my body. I went +back to my former life, and took up my old profession here in this +city." + +"Here!" The Judge muttered, under his breath. + +"And in that life I found opening responsibilities. New work called to +me. My help was needed. I could not shirk it. I knew the risk +always, but I counted it small. And the need was great! With such a +work waiting my hand, a labour that no one else, it seemed, could +do--one upon which much depended--was I to stand aside, to withhold my +effort on the slender chance that discovery might sometime overtake me?" + +The speaker seemed to have forgotten the Governor, to have swept all +else to one side and to be addressing now only the Judge, in an appeal +that touched the older man profoundly. It was, he thought, as though +the man's whole soul was crying out in some sense for forgiveness and +absolution for an injury unwittingly inflicted. + +"The one thing has happened now which must lay the past bare. I must +meet this--the scandal, the shame. My life, all that makes life worth +living, ends to-night, and I stand before you with the bare soul of a +truthful man. You have known me and trusted me. You--and others--have +put faith in me...." The voice, for the first time, faltered and fell. + +The Judge's head had been bowed, but he lifted it now. + +"God alone knows the secrets of our hearts," he said, heavily. "If you +were innocent--but of that how can I say? My view of your actions +since your escape--those which may affect me--must necessarily hang +upon that point. I could believe that you are not a burglar. It may +be that knowledge of your true identity will presently convince me of +this. And I might be persuaded that your presence in the Craig house +that night was no more than an unfortunate coincidence. But the +evidence of the shooting appeared at the time irrefutable. I cannot +conceive that the mere knowledge of what you are would be likely to +affect my belief in that respect. Your statement as to that is not +only wholly unsupported, but was--and is--bluntly contradicted by the +man who was shot." + +He ceased speaking. No word came from the striped figure, only a +slight movement of one hand, expressing at once resignation and +futility. Then the hand lifted to the mask. + +The Governor, however, stayed the action of revealment with a sudden +gesture. + +"One moment," he said quickly. "We have gone so far, I should like to +go a step further--and still forensically, if you please. The question +of identity may wait. Do I understand that you deny that you fired +that shot?" + +"I do." + +Craig lurched forward in his chair. "This is no trial court!" he +exclaimed savagely. "He has had his hearing once." + +"Be silent!" commanded the Governor. "This man is in my hands, not in +yours!" The warning was heavy and vengeful, and it held now all the +electric energy of the man that had made him famous through a long +career of criminal practice before his Governorship days, and that now, +unleashed, dominated the room. Before it Craig whitened with a surge +of anger that sent a keen probe of pain through his temple. He sat +back, breathing hard, his great fingers working on the arms of his +chair. + +The Governor was leaning forward now, his hand on the table. + +"If I recollect--and I think I do, as certain aspects of the case +interested me at the time--there was a witness to the shooting beside +the men who were assumed to be your comrades. There was a woman there." + +"She did not see my face." + +"But she might have seen the face of the shooter. Why did she not see +yours?" + +"I wore a mask." + +"Is not a mask, in itself, a badge of criminal intent?" + +"It was not mine. One of the men dropped it when they ran." + +"If, being innocent," the Governor went on, "you put on the mask, the +only presumption is that you did not wish the woman to recognise you. +Therefore, she knew. Did you speak to her?" + +There was no reply. + +"If you spoke to her, it was when the man who had fired the shot was in +flight. Your words to her, verified by herself--if she were +reputable--would be evidence that you did not do the shooting. Why +then, did you not call her as a witness?" + +The long French-window had swung again ajar and the cooling evening +breeze rustled the paper that lay upon the table. From the far road +there came a muffled, long-drawn cheer, that trailed across the tense +silence of the room. + +"If the significant fact which could be brought forward at your trial +was the identity of this missing witness; if her testimony would show +that the law had erred--if it might operate to establish your +innocence--would not she herself justify you in revealing it?" + +The silence, a longer one this time, remained unbroken. + +"Do you still refuse to tell the name of the woman?" + +"I do." + +The Governor leaned to the table and picked up the pen. But in the +instant there was a quick step behind them. + +All turned. Echo stood framed in the window--a figure in filmy white, +against which a single rose glowed like a hot ruby. + +"I was that woman, Governor Eveland," she said clearly. + + + + +CHAPTER XLVIII + +THE HEART OF A WOMAN + +For an instant there was a blank silence. The Judge sat as if stunned, +one hand across his lips, the other clenched on his knee. Harry's +breath had caught in his throat; he stood taken aback and confounded, +his thought shocked apart and dispersed as a street explosion +dissipates a crowd of pedestrians. He forgot all else, was conscious +only of the deep fire of her eyes and the white surge of her breast, +only that he loved her and that she stood on the brink of ruin--she +whose name was unspotted from the world! An irrepressible exclamation +burst from his lips. + +The Governor put up his hand. "We will have the truth!" he said +sternly. + +He sat erect in his chair, his bushy brows drawn together, his +compelling eyes holding Echo's. Slowly he turned his grey head toward +Craig. + +"It was Miss Allen," said Craig. His smouldering gaze had fastened on +her with a savage joy. The drama was rushing now to its inevitable +_denouement_. + +The crisis had come to Echo with fateful suddenness. From the +porch--whither she had stolen, full of excitement, to listen to the +bulletins from the east room that spelled victory for the cause of +Harry Sevier--she had glimpsed through the French window that gathering +in the library--the striped masked figure standing as before his +judges, Craig with his bandaged temple, the silent listeners. The mask +and the convict garb recalled that terrible midnight at Craig's house +and the later episode at the jail, blent in a shuddering composite, +even as the significance of the scene came home to her with a sudden +horrifying clarity. It was true then; Craig had returned recovered! +The escaped convict had been retaken, and he had come forward to repeat +his mistaken testimony! In her confusion of mind she did not reason: +it did not occur to her that here was no tribunal of justice. The +suggestion was overpowering: she only knew that within that room men +sat again in judgment upon him with whose fate her own peace of mind +was so entangled. And she knew the truth! In the swift surprise the +shame and horror of the publicity which had wrestled with her pain of +conscience during the weeks succeeding her visit to the jail and the +baleful certitude it had brought, rolled over her anew with the +anguished dread of Harry Sevier's contempt. But there was no wavering: +the fight had been fought out once for all, and she had waited for +Craig's revelation with outer calmness, though with her blood stilling +to an icy current in her veins. Two things had come to her at the same +instant: Craig did not intend to involve her, and the convict knew who +she was. As she leaned against the sill listening, the meaning of that +obstinate refusal to answer had thrilled her. He, like Craig, had +known her, then, all along. Yet he had not betrayed her, nor would he +betray her even now! The thought had spurred her resolve and sent her +forward into the room with that confession on her lips. + +She came forward slowly, with what seemed a pathetic weariness. Her +face was without colour and there were bruised shadows beneath her +eyes, but above them her amber hair was like sunbeams in a mesh of gold. + +"Governor Eveland," she said, "you have known me all my life. I do not +think you have ever had cause to doubt my word." + +"There is no need to remind me of that, my child," he answered, +gravely. "Neither I nor any one who knows you, would believe you spoke +anything but the truth." + +A wan smile, in which was yet a glint of pride, crossed her face. +"Then," she said, "I have faith that you will believe me now. I went +to that house to gain a thing dearer than my own happiness. No one at +home knew it. I did so secretly--my parents believed that I had gone +to visit my aunt." + +She paused an instant, and turned upon Craig a look of mingled scorn +and aversion. "This man had once done me the honour to ask me to marry +him, and I had done myself the honour to refuse. He had in his +hands--how it had come to him I have never known--a letter which he +threatened to publish. It was a personal letter that had no bearing on +the present--one written before I was born--but it had the power to +bring pain and humiliation upon some one I loved." + +The Judge lifted his head; his eyes were moist and shining. "That is +true," he said, in a smothered voice. "I knew of the letter, and--of +the threat." + +She did not proceed at once; her gaze was still upon Craig, and she +waited. + +"It is true enough," he said, and burst into jarring laughter. "Yes, +gentlemen. It is the fact. I had that letter and I would have made my +price on it!" He looked from one to the other challengingly, the +arrogance and unscrupulousness of the man leaping in his eyes. But no +one spoke. Only Treadwell, his eyes averted, moved his chair a little +further from him. + +"Yes," she repeated, deliberately. "You made your price. I went there +that night, to your house, to beg you for that letter. I waited for +you till you came, and when you would not give it to me otherwise, I +agreed to marry you." + +She faced the Governor again. "I was to marry him within the hour. +Then--then came the shot from the alcove. I was mad with fright and +with fear. There had been three men behind the curtains. Two ran--the +man who had done the shooting and another. The third--" + +She broke off and turned to the motionless figure in the striped +clothes. "I know now that you were the third!" she said. "I thank +you--with all my heart I thank you, for what you did!" + +There was no answer from behind the mask, and she again addressed the +Governor: + +"This man must have heard my pleading and pitied me. He thought of me +before he thought of his own escape. He took the letter I had come for +from the safe and gave it to me, then dragged me to the door and told +me to run. So I--I got away." + +The room was so still that one heard now, through the closed doors, the +muffled click of the telegraph keys in the east-room, and the voices of +the clerks calling the tally of figures. Wistfulness and pain had +crept into her voice now. + +"Next day the newspapers said that the man who had fired the shot had +been arrested. I believed this to be true, for though I went one day +to the trial, I was in the court-room only a few moments and I could +not see the face of the man who was being tried." + +The striped figure made a sudden involuntary movement. She had not +seen him, then? Could it be that he had been mistaken, that she had +not known? Harry's heart began to beat violently. + +"I believed it till months afterward, when I came back from Europe. +Then I saw a ring which this man had given to his lawyer. It was like +the one the man who had given me the letters had worn that night, and +this made me afraid that a mistake had been made. I visited the +Penitentiary to find out. It was the day of the attack on the +warden--when this man was stabbed in his defence." + +Again she paused and her eyes shifted to the masked figure. "You must +have known me," she said gently. "You must have known my name. Yet +you never told. Do you think, whatever it might mean to me--after what +you did--that I could keep silent, if the truth may help you now?" + +Sevier had no answer. Through and through the maze of his conflicting +feeling was stabbing an assurance sharpened with unbelievable joy. He +had been thinking her cowardly and calloused with worldly selfishness; +here she was risking all--and not for him, Harry Sevier, whom she +loved, but for an unknown convict! + +The Governor was looking at her with intentness. "You mean that he is +_not_ the one who did the shooting?" + +"He is not." + +Craig sneered. "She says what she has been told to say," he said with +dry lips. "You will understand why, presently." + +"Perhaps," returned the Governor, coldly, "I shall." Then, turning to +Echo-- + +"How do you know this is not the man?" + +"This man is tall; the man who did the shooting was short." + +"But--his face. You saw it that night distinctly? Would you know it +if you saw it again?" + +"As well as I know yours." + +He said no more, and after an instant's pause, she went on: + +"Mr. Mason, his lawyer, had told me he believed that if the shooting +could have been disproved, his client might have been cleared, and +knowing what I did, it seemed to me that I must tell the whole. +It--was not easy, for while that night I had thought only of keeping +the secret of the letter, I came to see later what the world would say +of my presence there. And a woman's name is all she has. So ... I +made up my mind. But that same day I read that the man had escaped +from prison. There seemed no longer any need then of my telling. +There had been no need till now." + +She stopped, and stood looking steadily at the Governor, her hands +twisted together, her face white. She was far less vividly conscious +of him, however, and of all the others--Craig, her father, +Treadwell--than of one whom she thought far away, but who now, sometime +or other, must know! + +The Governor spoke, quietly and evenly: + +"Let us go back to a matter of detail. I should like to picture the +scene that night a little more distinctly. Where were you standing +when the shot was fired?" + +She changed her position slightly. "Here, nearly in the centre of the +room." + +"And the man who shot from the alcove?" + +"There." She pointed one side, to the bay-window, before which now +stood Paddy the Brick. + +The latter would have drawn away, but the Governor stayed him with a +gesture. "No, stand where you are, if you please," he said. And Paddy +the Brick stood still, shifting his feet and ill-at-ease, his narrow +eyes turning stealthily toward Craig. + +To Echo the illusion was considerable, for the room was not unlike that +other library in which had occurred the scene she was so painfully +redrawing. There was the same effect of rich bookcases, of desk and +picture-hung walls, and in lieu of the alcove was the big double window +with its heavy drawn curtains. The Governor stretched his hand and +tilted the shade of the lamp, so that its light fell full upon the +latter, lighting the cringing face of the stool-pigeon before it. + +"What was the man who shot like?" he asked. + +"He was middle-sized and thick-set, with light hair that sprang in a +cowlick from his forehead. He..." + +She had stopped abruptly. She was staring with wide, horrified eyes at +the man who stood blinking in the radiance--at the up-thrust, +sand-coloured hair, the rounded shoulders, the red-rimmed eyes, which +now held a trapped look of animal fear. + +She stiffened. She pointed at him. + +"_You!_" she cried. "_You are the man who fired that shot!_" + + + + +CHAPTER XLIX + +THE GOVERNOR TAKES A HAND + +On the startled silence, already so tense with conflicting forces, the +accusation fell with the suddenness of an electric shock. + +Its effect on Paddy the Brick was instantaneous. He drew back, his +hand clutching at the curtains. He was looking not at Echo, but past +her, at the Governor, who had risen towering in his place, and if ever +guilt and the dread that is confession showed upon a face, it was +written upon his, in lines unmistakable that he who ran might read. + +Craig started from his seat. "You fool!" he snarled at him. + +But Paddy the Brick gave him no glance. The fear of the hunted was +upon him; he saw himself taken in a snare, the witnesses to his +unpunished act confronting him, and clutching at him the hand of the +Law. He turned, and with one desperate jerk, tore the hangings aside, +and with arms before his face, plunged bodily through the shattering +glass of the bay-window to the garden. + +So abrupt and fateful had been the crash of his headlong flight, that +for a breath it seemed as if all there had been turned to stone. Craig +first found voice. + +"Enough of this farce!" he cried. "Governor Eveland, this man is an +escaped convict, and I call upon you to do your duty!" + +The Governor turned swiftly on him, his cavernous eyes flashing fire. +His long forefinger shot out like a javelin. + +"You coward and blackmailer!" he blazed. "The man you brought here as +your witness was the one who shot you! His very flight is confession. +And I believe _you knew he was the guilty one_!" His deep voice rang +like a bell, quick with indignation and contempt. "You hate this man +before you, and when he came between you and your plan, you tried to +lie the noose about his neck!" + +Craig's face was convulsed, his hands moving in distorted gestures. A +writhing spot of pain was bubbling like a white-hot coal beneath the +bandage on his temple. He burst into a wild laugh. + +"Damn your beliefs!" he shouted. "You know who I am! The whole state +knows me! What I swore to I'll swear to again. You can't make black +into white by your opinions. This man is a convict--a _convict_! Do +you hear? He is under sentence..." + +The Governor had seated himself at the table and was writing swiftly. +He looked up now. + +"And I," he thundered, "am Governor. As such, I don't care who he is. +I don't want to know. It is enough that I am convinced of his +innocence, as I am of your perjury. Here is his pardon. From this +moment he is free!" + +He rose, and if honest indignation could have blasted, his look would +have blasted the man who stood livid and gasping before him: + +"Let me tell you one thing more, Cameron Craig! If you dare to drag +his name or that of this woman into publicity now, to satisfy your mean +revenge, I'll see that you are indicted, so help me God! We shall find +whose testimony will be believed!" + +Craig, swaying now on suddenly numb and uncertain feet, would have +shouted too, but his tongue seemed tied and a heavy torpor was +clutching all his limbs. He heard his own voice come forth ragged and +broken: + +"I--I dare! You--this--!" + +Tottering, he lurched to a chair and fell into it, even as the +Governor's look took on a glare of outraged astonishment--for Craig's +face now was drawn and contorted into a malignant grimace. But all at +once this faded out, the features became expressionless, the eyes dull, +and he slipped in a huddle from the chair to the floor. + +He lay there upon his face without a word or movement. He did not hear +the Governor's exclamation nor the voices about him, nor feel the touch +of inquiring hands at heart and wrist. His passion had undone him. +The dulling pulse beat on, but the brain had once more ceased its +functioning; nor would it ever again quicken that inert body, at the +behest of the great surgeon in Buda-Pesth or of any other. + + +Outside in the hall there were confusion and wondering voices, as the +Governor, bending his great frame to the burden, with the aid of the +Judge and other willing hands, bore the helpless, sagging form to the +car that waited at the foot of the drive with its attendants. Before +he followed the rest, Treadwell had turned and held out his hand to the +man in the convict dress, and there was in the gesture, no less than +the warm clasp, assurance man to man of steadfast silence and a +friendship that was to be without end. + +In the silent room--in a quiet that seemed curiously heavy after the +storm of ebullient passion and pain that had swept it--Echo, sitting +stirless but with every vein throbbing painfully, saw the striped +figure pass behind the big leathern screen, to emerge a moment later, +still wearing the mask but clad now in the conventional black-and-white +of masculine evening-dress. In his hand he carried a striped bundle. +He laid this on the red coals of the grate and the flames leaped up to +wind it in a mass of brightness, shaming, for one triumphant minute, +the dim light of the shaded lamp. As he stood with his back to her, +looking down upon the smouldering tinder, some trick in the posture +brought her a quick thrill of wretchedness. In the radiance she buried +her face in her hands. + +"Echo!" + +She started and looked up with a sudden wildness, for the cry seemed +weirdly to have materialised from the very substance of her longing. +The figure had turned from the fireplace--was standing before her--with +uncovered face! + + + + +CHAPTER L + +REVELATION + +"_You!_" she said. "_You--you!_" + +"Yes." + +With her eyes upon him she moved away with uncertain, backward steps. +When she spoke again it was with a quick breath that was like a sob, +and in a voice scarcely audible, with breaks between the words: "It +is--it was?--_you_--" + +"It was I." + +"You!" + +"Yes." + +"All--the time?" + +"All the time." + +There was a silence. She had begun to tremble from head to foot. Her +face was turned away and her hands were shaking; she clenched them +tight. Her voice fell lower, till it was the merest whisper: + +"You were the--the convict--the man--in Craig's library?" + +He came nearer. "Yes," he said. + +She put one hand to her throat. "I--don't care to understand--now. +I--I'm only trying--to realise--" She paused. The doming tinder in +the fire-place broke and fell, and for a last instant a yellow-ochre +burst of flame threw a bright golden veil about them. Two great tears +rolled down her cheeks. "Then you," she whispered, "then you know why +I went there. You could not believe that I--that I--" + +"My darling!" His arms were around her now, crushing her to him with +tender fierceness, till she could feel his heart thudding against her +breast, and the blossom crushed there held for him the scent of all the +roses of all the world. He bent his head and their lips clung into a +kiss. "Never--never--that!" he murmured, with his lips against her +cheek, "though I must be forgiven very much. I was blind. I thought +you knew--knew that it was really I there in the prison, knew and were +willing that it should be! And all the while..." + +"And I," she whispered, "I thought you had gone away, and didn't +care--any more. And all along--all along..." + +When they drew a little apart so that each might better see the other's +face, the wonder and miracle had touched them both with a kind of awe. +She looked at him with lips that were still trembling under the +startled glory in her eyes. "The day after that--that night--I went to +your office, saw my broken picture--and--the bottle. I guessed--I +guessed--" + +"It was true," he said. "I threw away my promise to you. I would have +thrown myself away with it! But it was not to be, sweetheart! I have +come back to you, dearest--dearest of all the world!" + +So they stood, haloed in the lamp-light, clinging together, swayed and +shaken, love and youth and dream melted into one golden eternity, +pouring forth tender, sweet confessions in broken words and silences, +oblivious to the passage of time, to the clamour that had begun to rise +from the rooms across the hall--to a sound that came over the tree-tops +of the avenue, blazing now with fireworks, the sound of jubilance and +marching feet, drawing nearer and nearer. + + +At midnight the great porch of Midfields was hung gay with lanterns and +bunting and Harry stood watching the rear-guard of torch-bearers stream +down the drive. The battalions had gathered like magic when the +blowing of whistles announced that the returns from the crucial +counties spelled victory beyond peradventure. They had swung down the +main street, a band at their head, a shouting, jostling army, to +acclaim the Governor-Elect. + +With his friends of the long fight--Judge Allen, Brent and a score of +others--about him, he had spoken to them, a short speech full of +feeling. They, not he, had won the fight, he told them. And the +victory was an earnest of the future. But the race was not always to +the swift nor the battle to the strong; the forces they had that day +vanquished would return to the struggle, and they must be beaten again +and again till the State, and every home within its borders, was free +forever. Now the cheering was over and the throngs had trooped away +after the band, to parade the denser streets of the business section, +while the Committee lingered for an exultant aftermath in the +dismantled east room. + +As Governor Eveland stood with the Judge on the porch, looking out over +the trampled lawn, Treadwell came up the drive. + +"I thought," he said, "that you would like to know about Craig. He is +as he was before they took him abroad for the operation. It is +unlikely that there will ever be any change again, they think." + +They heard him in silence, but across the mind of the older man was +flashing a stern epitaph--"He hath digged a pit for his neighbour, and +hath fallen into the midst of it himself." Presently he sighed--his +thought had shifted to the unknown man he had pardoned that night. + +"It has been a singular evening," he said. "I am sorry Sevier was not +here earlier--when our convict came. Strange that even you, Treadwell, +should not have seen his face! I wonder," he added musingly, "if we +shall ever know who he was!" + +The Judge shook his head--the same wonder was in his mind. Treadwell's +face was inscrutable. The Governor's gaze strayed up the long porch +where at the further end a girl stood with the Governor-Elect in the +rosy glow of the lanterns. He laid his gaunt hand affectionately on +the Judge's shoulder. + +"Brave and true!" he said. "When I think of what she told us tonight, +Beverly, I have no words!" + +Treadwell broke the silence. He spoke with a little flush mounting in +his face, "I hope I need not say that I--that what we have heard +to-night--" + +But the Judge stopped him. "My dear Treadwell!" he said, in gentle +reproof. "My dear Treadwell! We are all gentlemen!" + + +The Governor-Elect and the girl who stood beside him lingered a little +longer in the shadow of the crimson rambler. Down the avenue beyond +the great gate, the flambeaux clustered and faded and diminished, the +band music had throbbed to silence and about them was only the silver, +dew-silent night. They stood in silence. The old house behind them +was full of jovial voices and laughter, and every window was glowing +with lights, but where they stood was quiet and peace. + +At length he took both her hands and laid them together, beneath his +own, upon his breast. + + "'Hours fly, flowers die'" (he quoted), + "'New men, new ways, + Pass by; + Love stays.'" + + +He lifted the hands he held to his lips. "Do you know the one thing +that has come to me out of it all?" + +"Yes," she murmured, "I know." + +"It came to me in the night, last night. Up to then it had seemed +fate's whipper-in that was driving me. But then, when I saw the gulf +opening at my feet, and saw no way out, and ceased to struggle, I knew +all at once that fate is only an empty name; that it was--God." + +He felt her fingers quiver in his clasp. + +"There was an Eye that watched and a Hand that overruled," he said +slowly. "Even the evil and the hatred--the temptation, the sin and the +pain--the penalty--It overruled them all. Drink made the man who shot +Craig a criminal--yet but for that burglary you might now be Craig's +wife! Drink sent me to Craig's house that night--yet but for that +journey I could not have saved you. Drink closed the prison door on +me, but only there--I know it now!--could I have mastered it! And if I +have won in this campaign and if I sit--with you, my darling!--in the +Mansion on the Hill, it is because of what I learned within those +walls--the knowledge of what drink has done to men!" + +He released her hands and looked up into the heavens. + +"It shall vanish from this state," he said. "And it shall vanish from +this Union! I am as sure of it as if the sign of its passing were +written there in the sky!" + +She caught his arm. "See!" she said. + +Far away, city-ward, over the trees, against the deep, dark vault, the +dazzling, many-pointed blaze of a rocket paled and sank into the +darkness. + + + + +BOOKS BY + +HALLIE ERMINIE RIVES + +(Mrs. Post Wheeler) + + + The Long Lane's Turning + The Valiants of Virginia + The Kingdom of Slender Swords + Satan Sanderson + The Castaway + Hearts Courageous + A Furnace of Earth + + Tales From Dickens + + + + + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Long Lane's Turning, by Hallie Erminie Rives + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LONG LANE'S TURNING *** + +***** This file should be named 35326.txt or 35326.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/5/3/2/35326/ + +Produced by Al Haines + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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