Chapter IX: Part III: Miriam (3)

"That wouldn't matter. I'd let my fingers burn to the bone if it would do any good."

"It wouldn't. You may take my word for it. I know who you're talking about. It's Evie Colfax."

She started, looking guilty. "Why should you suppose that?"

"I've got eyes. I've watched her, and I know she's a little minx. Oh, you needn't protest. She's a taking little minx, and this time she's in the right."

"I'm afraid I don't know what you mean."

"What has Billy Merrow got to offer her, even if he is my nephew? Come now! He won't be in a position to marry for the next two or three years. Whereas that fellow Strange--"

"Have you heard anything about him?" she asked, breathlessly.

"It isn't what I've heard, it's what I see. He's a very good chap, and a first-rate man of business."

"Do you know him well--personally?"

"I meet him around--at the club and other places--and naturally I have something to do with him at the office. I like him. If Evie can snap him up she'll be doing well for herself. I'm sorry for Billy, of course; but he'll have time to break his heart more than once before he'll have money enough to do anything else with it. If I'd married at his age--"

This, however, was venturing on delicate ground, so that he broke off, wheeling round toward the centre of the drawing-room. She folded the documents and brought them to him.

"You know why I didn't send them?" he said, as he took them. "I thought if I came myself, you might have something to tell me."

"I haven't; not anything special, that is."

"You've told me something special already--that you're not looking for him back."

"I'd rather not talk about it now, if you don't mind."

"Then we'll talk about what goes with it--the other side of the subject."

"There is no other side of the subject."

"Oh, come now, Miriam! You haven't heard all I've got to tell you. You've never let me really present my case, as we lawyers say. If you could see things as I do--"

"But I can't, and you mustn't ask me to-day. I'm tired--"

"It would rest you."

"No, no; not to-day. Don't you see I'm not--I'm not myself? I've had a very trying morning."

"What's the matter? Tell me. I can keep a confidence even if I can't do some other things. Come now! I don't like to think you're worried when perhaps I could help you. That's what I should be good for, don't you see? I could assist you to bear a lot of things--"

His tone, which was so often charged with a slightly mocking banter, became tender, and he attempted to take her hand. For a minute it seemed as if it might be a relief to trust him, to tell him the whole story and follow his counsel; but a second's thought showed her that she could not shift the responsibility from herself, and that in the end she should have to act alone.

"Not to-day," she pleaded. "I'm not equal to it."

"Then I'll come another day."

"Yes, yes; if you like, only--"

"Some day soon?"

"When you like, only leave me now. Please go away. You won't think I'm rude, will you? But I'm not--not as I generally am--"

"Good-bye." He put out his, hand frankly, and smiled so humbly, and yet withal so confidently, that she felt as if in spite of herself she might yield to his persistence through sheer weariness.

* * * * *

To her surprise, the next few weeks passed without incident bringing no development in the situation. She saw little of Evie and almost nothing of Ford. One or two encounters with Charles Conquest had no result beyond the reiteration on his part of a set phrase, "You're coming to it, Miriam," which, while exasperating her nerves, had a kind of hypnotic effect upon her will. She felt as if she might be "coming to it." Without calculating the probabilities she saw clearly enough that if she married Conquest the very act would furnish proof to Ford that her intervention in his affairs had been without self-interest. It would even offer some proof to herself, the sort of proof that strengthens the resolution and supports what is tottering in the pride. Notwithstanding the valor with which she struggled her victory over herself was not so complete that she could contemplate the destruction of Ford's happiness with absolute confidence in the purity of her motives in bringing it to ruin. It was difficult to take the highest road when what was left of her own fiercest instincts accompanied her on it. That she had fierce instincts she was quite aware. It was not for nothing that she had been born almost beyond the confines of the civilized earth, of parents for whom law and order and other men's rights were as the dead letter. True, she was trying to train the inheritance received from them to its finer purposes, as the vine draws strange essences from a flinty soil and sublimates them into the grape--but it was still their inheritance. While she was proud of it, she was afraid of it; and the fact that it leaped with her to separate Norrie Ford from Evie Colfax was a reason for distrusting the very impulse she knew to be right. Marriage with Conquest presented itself, therefore as a refuge--from Ford's suspicion and her own.

For the time being, however, the necessity for doing anything was not pressing. Evie was caught into the social machine that had been set going on her account, and was not so much whirling in it as being whirled. Her energies were so taxed by the task of going round that she had only snatches of time and attention to give to her own future. In one of these she wrote to her uncle Jarrott, asking his consent to the immediate proclamation of her engagement, with his approval of her marriage at the end of the winter, though the reasons she gave him were not the same as those she advanced to Miriam. To him she dwelt on the maturity of her age--twenty by this time--the unchanging nature of her sentiments, and her desire to be settled down. To Miriam she was content to say, "There's something! and I sha'n't get to the bottom of it till we're married."

Of the opening thus unexpectedly offered her Miriam made full use, pointing out the folly or verifying suspicions after marriage rather than before.

"Well, I'm going to do it, do you see?" was Evie's only reply. "I know it will be all right in the end."

Still a few weeks were to pass, and it was early in the new year before Uncle Jarrott's cablegram arrived with the three words, "_If you like_." Miriam received the information at the opera, where she had been suddenly called on to take the place of Miss Jarrott, laid low with "one of her headaches." It was Ford who told her, during an entr'acte, when for a few minutes Evie had left the box with the young man who made the fourth in the party. Finding themselves alone, Ford and Miriam withdrew as far as possible from public observation, speaking in rapid undertones.

"But you'll not let her do it?" Miriam urged.

"I shall, if you will. You can stop it--or posptone it. If you don't, I have every right to forge ahead. It's no use going over the old arguments again--"

"You put me in an odious position. You want me either to betray you or betray the people who've been kind to me. It _would_ be betrayal if I were to let you go on."

"Then stop me; it's in your power."

"Very well; I will."

He gave her a quick look, astonished rather than startled, but there was no time for further speech before Evie and her companion returned.

It was Miriam's intention to put her plan into immediate execution, but she let most of the next day go by without doing anything. Understanding his driving her to extremes to be due less to deliberate defiance than to a desperate braving of the worst, she was giving him a chance for repentance. Just at the closing in of the winter twilight, at the hour when he generally appeared, the door was flung open and Billy Merrow rushed in excitedly.

"What's all this about Evie?" he shouted, almost before crossing the threshold. "I've been there, and no one is at home. What's it about? Who has invented the confounded lie?"

She could only guess at his meaning, but she forced him to shake hands and calm himself. Turning on the electric light, she saw a young man with decidedly tousled reddish hair, and features as haggard as a perfectly healthy, honest, freckled face could be.

"Sit down, Billy, and tell me about it."

"I can't; I'm crazy."

"So I see; but tell me what you're crazy about."

"Haven't you heard it? Of course you have. They wouldn't be writing it to Uncle Charlie if you didn't know all about it. But I'm hanged if I'll let it go on."

Little by little she dragged the story from him. Miss Queenie Jarrott had written to Charles Conquest as one of the oldest friends of the family to inform him, "somewhat confidentially as yet," of her niece's engagement to Mr. Herbert Strange, of Buenos Aires and New York. Uncle Charlie, knowing what this would mean to him, had come to break the news and tell him to "buck up and take it standing."

"I'll bet you I sha'n't take it lying down," he assured Miriam. "Evie is engaged to _me_."

"Yes, Billy, but you see Miss Jarrott didn't know it. That's where the mistake has been. You know I've always been opposed to the secrecy of the affair, and I advised you and Evie to wait till you could both speak out."

"It isn't so very secret. You know it and so does Uncle Charlie."

"But Evie's own family have been kept in the dark, except that she told her aunt in South America. But that's where the mistake comes in, don't you see? Miss Jarrott, not having an idea about you, you see--"

"Spreads it round that Evie is engaged to some one else, when she isn't. I'll show her who's engaged, when I can find her in. I'm going to sit on her door-step till--"

"I wouldn't do anything rash, Billy. Suppose you were to leave it to me?"

"What good would that do? If that old witch is putting it round, the only thing for Evie and me to do is to contradict her."

"Has Evie ever given you an idea that anything was wrong?"

"Evie's been the devil. I don't mind saying it to you, because you understand the kind of devil she'd be. But Lord! I don't care. It's just her way. She's told me to go to the deuce half a dozen times, but she knows I won't till she comes with me. Oh, no. Evie's all right--"

"Yes, of course, Evie's all right. But you know, Billy dear, this thing requires a great deal of management and straightening out, and I do wish you'd let me take charge of it. I know every one concerned, you see, so that I could do it better than any one--any one but you, I mean--"

"I understand that all right. I'm not going to be rough on them, but all the same--"

She got him to sit down at last, made tea for him, and soothed him. At the end of an hour he had undertaken not to molest Miss Jarrott, or to fight that "confounded South-American," or to say a word of any kind to Evie till she was ready to say a word to him. He became impressed with the necessity for diplomatic action and, after some persuasion, promised to submit to guidance--at any rate, for a time.

"And now, Billy, I'm going to write a note. The first thing to be done is that you should find Mr. Strange and deliver it to him before nine o'clock this evening. You'll do it quietly, won't you? and not let him see that you are anything more than my messenger. No matter where he is, even in a private house, you must see that he gets the note, if at all possible."

When he had sworn to this she wrote a few lines hurriedly. He carried them away in the same tumultuous haste with which he had come. After his departure she felt herself unexpectedly strong and calm.

XVIII

The feeling of being equal to anything she might have to face continued with her. Now that the moment for action had arrived she had confidence in her ability to meet it, since it had to be done. At dinner she was able to talk to Wayne on indifferent topics, and later, when he had retired to his den to practise his Braile, she sat down in the drawing-room with a book. Noticing that she wore the severe black dress in which she had assisted at the "killing off" of Evie's family, she brightened it with a few unobtrusive jewels, so as to look less like the Tragic Muse. The night being cold, a cheerful fire burned on the hearth, beside which she sat down and waited.

When he was shown in, about half-past eight, it seemed to her best not to rise to receive him. Something in her repose, or in her dignity, gave him the impression of arriving before a tribunal, and he began his explanations almost from the doorway.

"I got your note. Young Merrow caught me at dinner. I was dining alone, so that I could come at once."

"You're very kind. I'm glad you were able to do it. Won't you sit down?"

Without offering her hand, she indicated a high arm-chair suitable for a man, on the other side of the hearth. He seated himself with an air of expectation, while she gazed pensively at the fire, speaking at last without looking up.

"I hear Miss Jarrott has begun to announce your engagement to Evie."

"I understood she was going to, to a few intimate friends."

"And you allowed it?"

"As you see."

"Didn't you know that I should have to take that for a signal?"

"I've never given you to understand that a signal wouldn't come--if you required one."

"No; but I hoped--" She broke off, continuing to gaze at the fire. "Do you remember," she began again--"do you remember telling me--that evening on the shore of Lake Champlain--just before you went away--that if ever I needed your life, it would be at my disposal?--to do with as I chose?"

"I do."

"Then I'm going to claim it." She did not look up, but she heard him change his position in his chair. "I shouldn't do it if there was any other way. I'm sure you understand that. Don't you?" she insisted, glancing at him for an answer.

"I know you wouldn't do it, unless you were convinced there was a reason."

"I've tried to be just to you, and to see things from your point of view. I do; I assure you. If I were in your position I should feel as you do. But I'm not in your position. I'm in one of great responsibility, toward Evie and toward her friends."

"I don't see what you owe to them."

"I owe them the loyalty that every human being owes to every other."

"To every other--except me."

"I'm loyal to you, at least, whoever else may not be. But it wouldn't be loyalty if I let you marry Evie. I'm going to ask you--not to do it--to go away--to leave her alone--to go--for good."

There was a long silence. When he spoke, it was hoarsely but otherwise without change of tone.

"Is that what you meant?--just now?"

"Yes. That's what I meant."

"Do you intend me to get out of New York, to go back to the South--?"

She lifted her hand in protestation.

"I'm not giving orders or making conditions. New York is large. There's room in it for you and Evie, too."

"I dare say. One doesn't require much space to break one's heart in."

"Evie wouldn't break her heart. I know her better than you do. She'd suffer for a while, but she'd get over it, and in the end, very soon probably--marry some one else."

"How cruel you can be," he said, with a twisted smile.

"I can be, when it's right. In this case I'm only as cruel as--the truth. I'm saying it because it must make things easier for you. Your own pain will be the less from the knowledge that, in time, Evie will get over hers."

"I suppose it ought to be, but--"

He did not finish his sentence, and again there was a long hush, during which, while she continued to gaze pensively at the fire, she could hear him shifting with nervous frequency in his chair. When at last she ventured to look at him he was bowed forward, his elbow supported on his knee, and his forehead resting on his hand.

"You'll keep your promise to me?" she persisted, softly, with a kind of pitiful relentlessness.

"I'll tell you in a minute."

He jerked out the words in the brusque way in which a man says all that, for the moment, he is physically able to utter. She allowed more time to elapse. The roar of traffic and the clanging of electric trams came up from the street below, but no sound seemed able to penetrate the stillness in which they sat. As far as Miriam was conscious of herself at all, it was simply to note the curious deadness of her emotions, as though she had become a mere machine for doing right, like a clock that strikes punctually. Nevertheless, it caused her some surprise when he raised himself and said, in a voice that would have been casual on a common occasion:

"I suppose you think me a cad?"

"No; why should I?"

"Because I am one."

"I don't know why you should say that, or what it has to do with--anything."

"It's about that--that--promise."

"Oh!"

"Do you mind if we speak quite frankly? I should like to. I've been bluffing that point ever since you and I met again. It's been torture to have to do it--damned, humiliating torture; but it's been difficult to do anything else. You see, I couldn't even speak of it without seeming to--to insult you--that is, unless you took me in just the right way."

His look, his attitude, the tones of his voice, the something woe-begone and yet boyish in his expression, recalled irresistibly the days in the cabin, when he often wore just this air. She had observed before that when they were alone together the years seemed to fall from his manner, while he became the immature, inexperienced young fugitive again. She had scarcely expected, however, that this lapse into youth would occur to-night. She herself felt ages old--as though all the ends of the world had come upon her.

"You may say anything you like. There's nothing you could possibly tell me that I shouldn't understand."

"Well, then, when I made that promise, I meant to keep it, and to keep it in a special way. I thought--of course we were both very young--but I thought that, after what had happened--"

"Wait a minute. I want to tell you something before you go on." She rallied her spirit's forces for a desperate step, gathering all her life's possible happiness into one extravagant handful, and flinging it away, in order to save her pride before this man, who was about to tell her that he had never been able to love her. "What I am going to say may strike you as irrelevant; but if it is, you can ignore it. I expect to be married--in a little while--it's practically a settled thing--to Charles Conquest, whom I think you know. Now, will you go on, please?"

He stared at her in utter blankness.

"Good God!"

He got up and took a few restless turns up and down the room, his head bent, his hands behind his back. He reseated himself when his confused impressions grew clearer.

"So that it doesn't matter what I thought about--that promise?"

"Not in the least." She had saved herself. "The one thing important to me is that you should have made it."

"And that you can hold me to it," he added, tersely.

"I presume I can do that?"

"You can, unless--unless I find myself in a position to take the promise back."

"I can hardly see how that position could come about," she said, with an air of wondering.

"I can. You see," he went on in an explanatory tone, "it was an unusual sort of promise--a promise made, so to speak, for value received--for unusual value received. It wasn't one that a common occasion would have called forth. It was offered because you had given me--life."

He rested his arm now on a table that stood between them and, leaning toward her, looked her steadily in the eyes.

"I haven't the faintest idea what you're going to say," she remarked, rather blankly.

"No, but you'll see. You gave me life. I hold that life in a certain sense at your pleasure. It is at your disposal. It must remain at your disposal--- until I give it back."

She sat upright in her chair, leaning in her turn on the table, and drawing nearer to him.

"I can't imagine what you mean," she said, under her breath and looking a little frightened.

"You'll see presently. But don't be alarmed. It's going to be all right. As long as I hold the life you gave me," he continued to explain, "I must do your bidding. I'm not a free man; I'm--don't be offended--I'm your creature. I don't say I was a free man before this came up. I haven't been a free man ever since I've been Herbert Strange. I've been the slave of a sort of make-believe. I've made believe, and I've felt I was justified. Perhaps I was. I'm not quite sure. But I haven't liked it; and now I begin to feel that I can't stand it any longer. You follow me, don't you?"

She nodded, still leaning toward him across the table, and not taking her eyes from his. He remembered afterward though he paid no heed to it at the time, how those eyes grew wide with awe and flashed with strange, lambent brightness.

"I told you a few days ago," he pursued, "that there were _times_ when it was hell. That was putting it mildly--too mildly. There's been no time when it wasn't hell--in here." He tapped his forehead. "I've struggled, and fought, and pushed, and swaggered, and bluffed, and had ups and downs, and taken heart, and swaggered and bluffed again, and lied all through--and I've made Herbert Strange a respectable man of business on the high road to success. But when I come near you it all goes to pieces--like one of those curiously conserved dead bodies when they're brought to the air. There's nothing to them. There's nothing to me--so long as I'm Herbert Strange."

"But you _are_ Herbert Strange. You can't help yourself--now."

"Herbert Strange goes back into the nothingness out of which he was born the minute I become Norrie Ford again."

"But you can't do that!"

She drew herself up hastily, with a gasp.

"It's exactly what I mean to do." He spoke very slowly "I'm going to be a free man, and my own master, even if it leads me where--where they meant to put me when you snatched me away. I'm going back to my fellow-men, to the body corporate--"

She rose in agitation, and drew back from him toward the chimney-piece. "So that if--if anything happens," she said, "I shall have driven you to it. That's how you get your revenge."

"Not at all. I'm not coming to this decision suddenly, or in a spirit of revenge, in any way." He followed her, standing near her, on the hearth-rug. "I can truthfully say," he went on in his slow, explanatory fashion, "that there's been no time, since the minute I made my first dash for liberty, when I haven't known, in the bottom of my heart, what a good thing it would have been if I hadn't done it. I've come to see--I've _had_ to--- that the death-chair would have been better, with self-respect, than freedom to go and come, with the necessity to gag every one, every minute of the day, and every day in the year, and all the time, with lies. If that seems far-fetched to you--"

"No, it doesn't."

"Well, if it did you'd see it wasn't, if you were in my place for a month. I didn't mind it so much at first. I stood it by day and just suffered by night--till the Jarrotts began to be so kind to me, and I came to New York--and--and--and Evie!"

"I'm sorry I've spoken to you as I have," she said, hastily. "If I'd known you felt like that--"

"You were quite right. I always understood that. But I can't go on with it. If Evie marries me now, it shall be knowing who I am."

"You don't mean that you could possibly tell her?"

"I'm going to tell every one."

She stifled a little cry. "Then it will be my doing!"

"It will be your doing--up to a point. But it will be something for you to be proud of, not to regret. You've only brought my mistake so clearly before me that even I can't stand it--when I've stood so much. You ask me to turn my back on Evie and sneak away. You've got the right to command, and there's nothing for me but to obey you. But I can't help seeing the sort of life that would be left to me after I'd carried out your orders. It wouldn't only be the loss of Evie--I may lose her in any case--it would be the loss of everything within myself that's enabled me hitherto merely to hold up my head--and bluff."

"I might withdraw what I've just asked you to do. Perhaps we could find some other way."

He laughed with grim lightness.

"You're weakening. That's not like you. And it wouldn't do any good now. Even if we did patch up some other scheme, there would still remain what you talked about a minute ago--the loyalty that every human being owes to every other."

"But I thought you didn't recognize that?"

"I said I didn't. But in here"--he tapped his fingers over the heart--"I did, and I do. You've brought me to see it."

"That's very noble, but you saw it for yourself--"

"Through a glass--darkly; now I can look at the thing in clear daylight, and see what I have to do."

She dropped into her chair again, looking up at him. He stood with his back to the fire, holding his head high, his bearing marked by a dogged, perhaps forced, serenity.

"But what _can_ you do?" she asked, after considering his words. "You're so involved. All this business--and the people in South America--"

"Oh, there are ways and means. I haven't made plans, but I've thought, from time to time, of what I should do if I ever came to just this pass. The first thing would be to tell the few people who are most concerned, confidentially. Then I should go back to South America, and settle things give me your respect again--not even the little you've given me hitherto--and God knows that can't have been much. I could stand anything in the world--anything--rather than that you should come to that."

"But I shouldn't, when I myself had dissuaded you--"

"No, no; don't try. You'd be doing wrong. You've been to me so high and holy that I don't like to think you haven't the strength to go on to the end. I've got it, because you've given it me. Don't detract from your own gift by holding me back from using it. You found me a prisoner--or an escaped one--and I've been a prisoner all these years, the prisoner of something worse than chains. Now I'm going free. Look!" he cried, with sudden inspiration. "I'll show you how it's done. You'll see how easy it will be."

He moved to cross the room.

"What are you going to do?"

She sprang up as if to hold him back, but his finger was on the bell.

"You don't mind, I hope?" he asked; but he had rung before she could give an answer. The maid appeared in the doorway.

"Ask Mr. Wayne if he would be good enough to come in here a minute. Tell him Mr. Strange particularly wants to see him."

He went back to his place by the fireside, where he stood apparently calm, showing no sign of excitement except in heightened color and the stillness of nervous tension Miriam sank into her chair again.

"Don't do anything rash," she pleaded. "Wait till to-morrow There will always be time. For God's sake!"

If he heard her he paid no attention, and presently Wayne appeared. He hesitated a minute on the threshold, and during that instant Ford could see that he looked ashy and older, as if something had aged him suddenly. His hands trembled, too, as he felt his way in.

"Good-evening," he said, speaking into the air as blind men do. "I thought I heard your voice."

Having groped his way across the room and reached the table that stood between the arm-chairs Miriam and Ford had occupied, he stopped. He stood there, with fingers drumming soundlessly on the polished wood, waiting for some one to speak.

In spite of the confidence with which he had rung the bell, Ford found it difficult now to begin. It was only after one or two inarticulate attempts that he was able to say anything.

"I asked you to come in, sir," he began, haltingly, "to tell you something very special. Miss Strange knows it already.... If I've done wrong in not telling you before ... you'll see I'm prepared to take my punishment.... My name isn't Strange ... it isn't Herbert."

"I know it isn't."

The words slipped out in a sharp tone, not quite nervous, but thin and worn. Miriam's attitude grew tense. Ford took a step forward from the fireside. With his arm flung over the back of his chair, and his knee resting on the seat of it, he strained across the table, as if to annihilate the space between Wayne and himself.

"You _knew_?"

The blind man nodded. When he spoke it was again into the air.

"Yes; I knew. You're Norrie Ford. I ought to say I've only known it latterly--about a fortnight now."

"How?"

"Oh, it just came to me--by degrees, I think."

"Why didn't you say something about it?"

"I thought I wouldn't. It has worried me, but I thought I'd keep still."

"Do you mean that you were going to let everything--go on?"

"I weighed all the considerations. That's the decision I came to. You must understand," he went on to explain, in a voice that was now tremulous as well as thin, "that I'd had you a good deal on my mind, during these past eight years. I sentenced you to death when I almost knew you were innocent. It was my duty. I couldn't help it. The facts told dead against you. Every one admitted that. True, the evidence might have been twisted to tell against old Gramm and his wife, but they hadn't been dissipated, and they hadn't been indicted, and they hadn't gone round making threats against Chris Ford's life like you."

"I didn't mean them. It was nothing but a boy's rage--"

"Yes, but you made them; and when the old man was found--But I'll not go into that now. I only want to say that, while I couldn't acquit you with my intelligence, I felt constrained to do it in my heart, especially when everything was over, and it was too late. The incident has been the one thing in my professional career that I've most regretted. I don't quite blame myself. I had to do my duty. And yet it was a relief to me when you got away. I don't know that I could have acted differently, but--but I liked you. I've gone on liking you. I've often thought about you, and wondered what had become of you. And one day--not long ago--as I was going over the old ground once more, I saw I'd been thinking about--_you_. That's how it came to me."

"And you were going to remain silent, and let me marry Evie?"

The blind man reflected.

"I saw what was to be said against it. But I weighed all the evidence carefully. You were an injured man; you'd made a great fight and you'd won--as far as one man can win against the world. I came to the conclusion that I wasn't called on to strike you down a second time, after you'd scrambled up so pluckily. Evie is very dear to me; I don't say that I should see her married to you without some misgiving; but I decided that you deserved her. It was a great responsibility to take, but I took it and made up my mind to--let her go."

"Oh, you're a good man! I didn't think there was such mercy in the world."

Ford flung out the words in a cry that was half a groan and half a shout of triumph. Miriam choked back a sob. The neat little man shrugged his shoulders deprecatingly.

"There's one thing I should like to ask," he pursued, "among the many that I don't know anything about, and that I don't care to inquire into. How did you come by the name of this lady's father, my old friend Herbert Strange?"

Ford and Miriam exchanged swift glances. She shook her head, and he took his cue.

"I happened to see it in a--a sort of--paper. I had no idea it was that of a real person. I fancied it had come out of a novel--- or something like that. I didn't mean to keep it, but it got fastened on me."

"Very odd," was his only comment. "Isn't it, Miriam?

"Now," he _added_, "I suppose you've had all you want of me, so I'll say good-night."

He held out his hand, which Ford grasped, clinched rather, in both his own.

"God bless you!" Wayne murmured, still tremulously. "God bless you--my boy, and bring everything out right. Miriam, I suppose you'll come in and see me before you go to bed."

They watched him shuffle his way out of the room, and watched the door long after he had closed it. When at last Miriam turned her eyes on Ford they were luminous with the relief of her own defeat.

"You see!" she cried, triumphantly. "You see the difference between him and me--between his spirit and mine! Now which of us was right?"

"You were."

XIX

The one thing clear to Miriam on the following day was that she had ruined everything with astonishing completeness--a curious result to come from what she was firmly convinced was "doing right." She had calculated that, by a moderate measure of suffering to Evie, and a large one to Ford, Evie's ultimate welfare at least would be secured. Now everything was being brought to grief together. Out of such a wreck nothing could be saved.

With Ford's desire to break the force which made him an impostor she had sympathy, but his willingness to risk his life in order to be in harmony with law and order again was not so easy for her to understand. While education, training and taste kept her, in her own person, within the restrictions of civilized life, yet the part of a free-lance in the world appealed to her strongly atavistic instincts far more directly than membership in a disciplined regular army. The guerilla fighter must of necessity be put to shifts--even moral shifts--which the common soldier, trained and commanded by others, can be spared; but her heart was with the man roving in the hills on his own account. That Ford should deliberately seek chains in barracks, when by her surrender on the subject of Evie she had made it possible for him still to keep the liberty of the field, was to her at once incomprehensible and awful. She had not only the sense of watching a man rushing upon Fate, but the knowledge that she herself had given him the impetus; while she was fully alive to the fact that when he fell everything she cared for in the world would fall with him.

Her mind was too resourceful, her spirit too energetic, to permit of her sitting in helpless anguish over his new determination. She was already busy with plans for counteracting him, in one of which at least she saw elements of hope. Having conceived its possibilities, she was eager to go and test them; but she had decided not to leave the house until she knew that Ford was really putting his plans into execution. The minute Evie learned the fatal news she would have need of her, and she dared not put herself out of the child's reach. Her first duty must be toward the fragile little creature, who would be crushed like a trampled flower.

Shortly before noon she was summoned to the telephone, where Evie was asking if she should find her in. Miriam judged from the tones of the transmitted voice that the worst had been made known. She was not, however, prepared for the briskness with which, ten minutes later, Evie whisked into the room, her cheeks aglow with excitement and her heavenly eyes dancing with a purely earthly sparkle.

"Isn't this awful?" she cried, before Miriam could take her into her loving arms. "Isn't it appalling? But it's not a surprise to me--not in the least. I knew there was something. Haven't I said so? I almost knew that his name wasn't Strange. If I hadn't been so busy with my coming out--and everything--I should have been sure of it. I haven't had time to think of it--do you see? With a lunch somewhere every day at half-past one," she hurried on, breathlessly, "and a tea at half-past four, and a dinner at eight, and a dance at eleven, and very likely the theatre or the opera in between--well, you can see I haven't been able to give much attention to anything else; but I knew, from the very time when I was in Buenos Aires, that there was something queer about that name. I never saw a man so sensitive when any one spoke about his name, not in all my life before--and you know down there it's the commonest thing--why, they're so suspicious on that point that they'd almost doubt that mine was Evie Colfax."

She threw her muff in one direction, her boa in another, and her gloves in still another.

"But, Evie darling, you surely didn't think--"

"Of course I never thought of anything like this. I didn't really think of anything at all. If I'd begun to give my mind to it, I should probably have hit on something a great deal worse."

"What do you mean, dear? Worse--than what?"

"Worse than just being accused of shooting your uncle--and it was only his great-uncle, too. I might have thought of forgery or something dishonorable, though I should know he wasn't capable of it. Being accused isn't much. You can accuse _any one_--you could accuse _me_. That doesn't prove anything when he says he didn't do it. Of course he didn't do it. Can't any one _see_? My goodness! I wish they'd let me make the laws. I'd show them. Just think! To put a man like that in prison--- and say they'd do such awful things to him--and make him change his name--and everything. It's perfectly scandalous. It's an outrage. I shouldn't think such things would be allowed. They wouldn't be allowed in the Argentine. Why, there was a man out there who killed his father-in-law--actually _killed_ him--and they didn't do anything to him at all. I've seen him lots of times. Aunt Queenie has pointed him out to me. He used to have the box next but two to ours at the opera. And to think they should take a man like Herbert, and worry him like that--it makes me so indignant I'd like to--"

Evie ground her teeth, threw her clinched fists outward, and twitched her skirts about the room in the prettiest possible passion of righteous anger.

"But, darling," Miriam asked, in a puzzled voice, "what are you going to do about it?"

Evie wheeled round haughtily.

"Do about it? What would you expect me to do about it? I'm going to tell every one he didn't do it--that's what I'm going to do about it. But of course we're not to speak of it just yet--outside ourselves, you know. He's going to Buenos Aires to tell Uncle Jarrott he didn't do it--and when he comes back we're going to make it generally known. Oh, there's to be law about it--and everything. He means to change his name again to what it was before--Ford, the name was--and I must say, Miriam, I like that a good deal better than Strange, if you don't mind my telling you. It seems odd to have so many Stranges--and I must say I never could get used to the idea of having exactly the same name as yours. It was almost like not being married outside the family--and I should hate to marry a relation. That part of it comes as a pleasant surprise, do you see? I'd made up my mind to Strange, and thought there was no way of getting rid of it, unless I--but I wasn't looking ahead to anything of _that_ kind. I hope I shall never--"

"So, darling, you're going to be true to him?"

"True to him? Of course I'm going to be true to him. Why shouldn't I be? I'm going to be more true to him now than I was before. He's so noble about it, too. I wish you could have seen the way he broke it to me. Aunt Queenie said she never saw anything so affecting, not even on the stage. She was there, you know. Herbert felt he couldn't go over it all twice, and he thought I should need some one to support me through the shock. I didn't--not a bit. But I wish you could have been there, just to see him."

"I can fancy it, dear."

"Of course I know now what you've been fidgeting about ever since he came to New York. He says you recognized him--that you'd seen him at Greenport. Oh, I knew there was something. But I must say, Miriam, I think you might have told me confidentially, and not let it come on me as such a blow as this. Not that I take it as a blow, though, of course, it upsets things terribly. We can't announce our engagement for ever so long, and Aunt Queenie is rushing round in the motor now to take back what she wrote to a few people yesterday. I can't imagine what she'll tell them, because I charged her on her sacred honor not to give them the idea it was broken off, although I'd rather they thought it was broken off than that I hadn't been engaged at all."

"Miss Jarrott takes it quietly, then?"

"Quietly! I wish you could see her. She thinks there never was anything so romantic. Why, she cried over him, and kissed him, and said she'd always be his friend if every one else in the world were to turn against him. As a matter of fact, the poor old dear is head over heels in love with him--do you see?--in that sort of old-maid way--you know the kind of thing I mean. She thinks there's nobody like him, and neither there is. I shall miss him frightfully while he's down there telling Uncle Jarrott. I shall skip half my invitations and go regularly into retreat till he comes back. There's lots more he's going to tell me then--all about what Popsey Wayne had to do with it--and everything. I'm glad he doesn't want to do it now, because my head is reeling as it is. I've so many things to think of--and so much responsibility coming on me all at once--and--"

"Are you going to do anything about Billy?"

"Well, I can postpone that, at any rate. Thank goodness, there's _one_ silver lining to the cloud. I was going to give him a pretty strong hint to-night, seeing Aunt Queenie has begun writing notes around, but now I can let him simmer for a while longer. He won't be able to say I haven't let him down easy, poor old boy. And, Miriam dear," she continued, gathering up her various articles of apparel, preparatory to taking leave, "you'll keep just as quiet about it as you can, like a dear, won't you? We don't mean to say a word about it outside ourselves till Herbert comes back from seeing Uncle Jarrott. That's my advice--and it's all our advice--I mean, Aunt Queenie's, too. Then they're going to law--or something. I know you _won't_ say anything about it, but I thought I'd just put you on your guard."

* * * * *

If Evie's way of taking it was a new revelation to Miriam, of her own miscalculation, it was also a new incentive to setting to work as promptly as possible to repair what she could of the mischief she had made. With Evie's limitations she might never know more of the seriousness of her situation than a bird of the nature of the battle raging near its nest; while if even Ford "went to law," as Evie put it, and he came off victorious, there might still be chances for their happiness. To anything else Miriam was indifferent, as a man in the excitement of saving his children from fire or storm is dead to his own sensations. It was with impetuous, almost frenzied, eagerness, therefore, that she went to the telephone to ring up Charles Conquest, asking to be allowed to see him privately at his office during the afternoon.

In what she had made up her mind to do the fact that she was planning for herself an unnecessary measure of sacrifice was no deterrent. She was in a mood in which self-immolation seemed the natural penalty of her mistakes. She was not without the knowledge that money could buy the help she purposed to obtain by direct intervention; but her inherited instincts, scornful of roundabout methods, urged her to pay the price in something more personal than coin. It replied in some degree to her self-accusation, it assuaged the bitterness of her self-condemnation, to know that she was to be the active agent in putting right that which her errors of judgment had put wrong. To her essentially primitive soul atonement by proxy was as much out of the question as to the devotee beneath the wheels of Juggernaut. Somewhere in the background of her thought there were faint prudential protests against throwing herself away; but she disdained them, as a Latin or a Teuton disdains the Anglo-Saxon's preference for a court of law to the pistol of the duellist. It was something outside the realm of reason. Reckless impulses subdued by convent restraint or civilized requirements awoke with a start all the more violent because of their long sleep, driving her to do that which she knew other women would have done otherwise or not at all.

She was aware, therefore, of limitations in the sacrifice she was making; she was even aware that, in the true sense, it was no sacrifice whatever. She was offering herself up because she chose to--in a kind of wilfulness--but a passionate wilfulness which claimed that for her at least there was no other way. Other women, wiser women, women behind whom there was a long, moderation-loving past, might obey the laws that prompt to the economy of one's self; she could only follow those blind urgings which drove her forefathers to fight when they might have remained at peace, or whipped them forth into the wild places of the earth when they could have stayed in quiet homes. The hard way in preference to the easy way was in her blood. She could no more have resisted taking it now than she could have held herself back eight years ago from befriending Norrie Ford against the law.

Nevertheless, it was a support to her to remember that Conquest's manner on the occasions when business brought her to his office was always a little different from that which he assumed when they met outside. He was much more the professional man with his client, a little the friend, but not at all the lover--if he was a lover anywhere. Having welcomed her now with just the right shade of cordiality, he made her sit at a little distance from his desk, while he himself returned to the revolving-chair at which he had been writing when she entered. After the preliminary greetings, he put on, unconsciously, the questioning air a business man takes at the beginning of an interview which he has been invited to accord.

"I came--about Evie."

Now that she was there it was less easy to begin than she had expected.

"Quite so. I knew there was a hitch. I've just had a mysterious note from Queenie Jarrott which I haven't been able to make out. Can't they hit it off?"

"It's a good deal more serious than that. Mr. Strange came to see Mr. Wayne and me last night. I may as well tell you as simply as I can. His name isn't Strange at all."

"Ho! ho! What's up?"

"Did you ever hear the name of--Norrie Ford?"

"Good Lord, yes! I can't quite remember--Let's see. Norrie Ford? I know the name as well as I know my own. Wasn't that the case--why, yes, it must have been--wasn't that the case Wayne was mixed up in six or eight years ago?"

"Yes, it was."

"The fellow gave 'em all the slip, didn't he?"

She nodded.

"Hadn't he been commuted to a life sentence--?"

"Mr. Wayne hoped it would be done, but it hadn't been done yet. He was still under sentence of--death."

"Yes, yes, yes. It comes back to me. We thought Wayne hadn't displayed much energy or ability of foresight--or something. I remember there was talk about it, and in the newspapers there was even a cock-and-bull story that Wayne had connived at his escape. Well, what has that got to do with Evie?"

"It has everything to do with her."

Conquest's little gray-green eyes blinked as if against the blaze of their own light, while his features sharpened to their utmost incisiveness.

"You don't mean to say--?"

"I do."

"Well, upon--my--!" The exclamation trailed off into a silent effort to take in this extraordinary piece of intelligence "Do you mean to say the scamp had the cheek--? Oh no, it isn't possible. Come now!"

"It was exactly as I'm going to tell you, but I don't think you should call him a scamp. You see, he's engaged to Evie--"

"He's not engaged to her now?"

"He is. She means to be true to him. So do we all."

Two little scarlet spots burned in her cheeks, but it was not more in the way of emotion than a warm partisanship on Evie's account demanded.

"Well, I'm blowed!" He swung one leg across the other, making his chair describe a semicircle.

"Perhaps you won't be so much--blowed, when you hear all I have to tell you."

"Go ahead; I'm more interested than if it was a dime novel."

As lucidly as she could she gave him the outline of Ford's romance, dwelling as he had done in relating it to her, less on its incidents than on its mental and moral effect upon himself. She suppressed the narrative of the weeks spent in the cabin and based her report entirely on information received from Ford. For testimony as to his life and character in the Argentine she had the evidence of Miss Jarrott, while on the subject of his business abilities--no small point with a New York business man, as she was astute enough to see--there could be no better authority than Conquest himself, who, as Stephens and Jarrott's American legal adviser, had had ample opportunity of judging. She was gratified to note that as her story progressed it called forth sympathetic looks, and an occasional appreciative exclamation, while now and then he slapped his thigh as a mark of the kind of amused astonishment that verges on approbation.

"So we couldn't desert him now, after she's been so brave, could we?" she pleaded, with some amount of confidence; "and especially when he's engaged to Evie."

"I suppose we can't desert him, if he's sane."

"Oh, he's sane."

"Then why the deuce, when he was so well out of harm's way, didn't he stay there?"