Thinking that Ford might come again next afternoon, Miriam went out. On her return she found his card--_Mr. Herbert Strange._ The same thing occurred the next day, and the next, and so on through the week. She was not afraid of seeing him. Now that the worst was known to her, she was sure of her mastery of herself, and of her capacity to meet anything. What she feared most was her sympathy for him, and the possibility that in some unguarded moment of pity he might wring concessions from her which she had no right to make. She hoped, too, that time, even a few days" time, would help him to work out the honorable course for himself.
Her meetings with Evie were more inevitable, and required greater self-repression. She was so used to the part of elder sister, with whom all confidences are discussed, that she found it difficult not to speak her heart out frankly.
"I heard he had been to see you and Popsey Wayne, and told you," Evie said, with her pretty nose just peeping above the bedclothes, at midday, on a morning later in the week. It was the day after Evie"s first large dance, and she had been sleeping late. Miriam sat on the edge of the bed, smoothing stray golden tendrils off the flushed, happy little face.
"He did come," Miriam admitted. "Mr. Wayne made no objections. I can"t say he was glad. You wouldn"t expect us to be that, dear, would you?"
"I expect you to like him. It isn"t committing you to much to say that.
But you seem so--so every which way about him."
"I"m not every which way about him. I can"t say that I"m any way at all.
Yes, I do like him--after a fashion. If I make reserves, it"s because I"m not sure that I think him good enough for my little Evie."
"He"s a great deal too good!" Evie exclaimed, rapturously. "Oh, Miriam, if you only knew how fond I am of him! I"d die for him--I truly believe I would--almost! Oh, it was so stupid last night without him! All these boys seem such pigeons beside him. I"m sorry now we"re not going to announce the engagement at once. I certainly sha"n"t change my mind--and it would be such fun to be able to say I was engaged before coming out."
"Twice before coming out."
"Oh, well, I only count it once, do you see? Billy"s such a goose. You should have seen him last night when I forgot two of my dances with him--on purpose. He"s really getting to dislike me; so that I shall soon be able to--to show him."
"I wouldn"t be in a hurry about that, dear. There"s lots of time. As you said the other day, it"s no use hurting his feelings--"
Evie sat up suddenly in bed, and looked suspicious.
"So you"re taking that stand. Now I know you don"t like him. You"ve got something against him, though I can"t for the life of me imagine what it can be, when you never laid eyes on him till a few days ago. Well, I"m not going to change, do you see? You may as well make up your mind to that at once. And it will be Billy or no Billy."
Nearer than that Miriam could not approach the subject through fear of doing more harm than good. At the end of a week Ford found her at home, chiefly because she felt it time he should. She secured again the afternoon-call atmosphere; but she noticed that he carried a small packet--a large, brownish-yellow envelope, strapped with rubber bands--which he kept in his hand. She was struck by the greater ease of his entry, and by the renewal of that sense of comradeship which had marked his bearing toward her in the old days in the cabin. The small comedy of introductory commonplace went off smoothly.
"Well?" he said then, with a little challenging laugh.
"Well--what?"
"I"ve been waiting for your move. You haven"t made it."
She shook her head. "I"ve no move to make."
"Oh yes, you have--a great big move. You can easily say, Check. I doubt if you can make it, Checkmate."
"I"m afraid that"s a game I don"t know how to play."
He stared at her inquiringly--noting the disdain with which her chin tilted and her lip curled, though he could see it was a disdain suffused with sweetness.
"Do you mean that you wouldn"t--wouldn"t give me away?"
"I mean that you"re either broaching a topic I don"t understand or speaking a language I"ve never learned. If you don"t mind, we won"t discuss the subject, and we"ll speak our mother-tongue--the mother-tongue of people like you and me."
He stared again. It took him some few seconds to understand her phraseology. In proportion as her meaning broke upon him, his face glowed.
When he spoke it was with enthusiasm for her generosity in taking this stand rather than in grat.i.tude for anything he was to gain by it.
"By Jove, you"re a brick! You always were. I might have expected that this is exactly what you"d say."
"I hope so. I didn"t expect that you"d talk of my giving you away, as you call it--to any one."
"But you"re wrong," he said, with a return to the laughing bravado which concealed his inward repugnance to his position. "You"re wrong. I"ll give you that tip now. I"ll fight fair. I sha"n"t be grateful. I"ll profit by your magnanimity. Remember it"s my part in the world to be unscrupulous.
It has to be. I"ve told you so. With me the end justifies the means--always; and when the end is to keep my word to Evie, it will make no difference to me that you were too high-minded to put the big obstacle in my way."
"You"ll not expect me to be otherwise than sorry for that--for your sake."
"No, I dare say. But I can"t stop to think of what any one feels for my sake when I know what I feel for my own."
"Which is only an additional reason for my being--sorry. You don"t find fault with me for that?"
"I do. I don"t want you to be sorry. I want to convince you. I want you to see things from my point of view--how I"ve been placed. Good Lord! it"s hard enough, without the sense that you"re sitting in judgment on me."
"I"m not sitting in judgment on you--except in so far as concerns Evie Colfax. If it was anybody else--"
"But it couldn"t be anybody else It"s Evie or no one. She"s everything on earth to me. She"s to me what electricity is to the wire--that which makes it a thing alive."
"To be a thing alive isn"t necessarily the highest thing."
"Ah, but that doesn"t apply to me. It"s all very well for other men to say, "All is lost to save honor." They have compensations. I haven"t. You might as well ask a man to think of the highest thing when he"s drowning."
"But I should. There have been men who haven"t--and they"ve saved their lives by it. But you know what we"ve called them."
"In my case there"d be only you to call me that--if you wanted to."
"Oh no; there"d be--you."
"I can stand that. I"ve stood it for eight years already. If you think I haven"t had times when it"s been h.e.l.l, you"re quite mistaken. I wonder if you can guess what it means to me--in here"--he tapped his breast--"to go round among all these good, kind, honorable people, pa.s.sing myself off as Herbert Strange when all the time I"m Norrie Ford--and a convict? But I"m forced to. There"s no way out of it."
"Because there"s no way out of it isn"t a reason for going further in."
"What does that matter? When you"re in up to the eyes, what does it matter if you go over your head?"
"In this case it would matter to Evie. That"s my point. I have to protect her--to save her. There"s no one but me to do it--and you."
"Don"t count on me," he said, savagely. "I"ve the right, in this wild beast"s life, to seize anything I can s.n.a.t.c.h."
He renewed his arguments, going over all the ground again. She listened to him as she had once listened to his plea in his defence--her pose pensive, her chin resting on her hand, her eyes pitiful. As far as she was aware of her own feelings it was merely to take note that a kind of yearning over him, an immense sorrow for him and with him, had extinguished the fires that a few days ago were burning for herself. It was hard to sit there heedless of his exposition and deaf to his persuasion. Seeing her inflexible, he became halting in his speech, till finally he stopped, still looking at her with an unresenting, dog-like gaze of entreaty.
She made no comment when he ceased, and for a time they sat in silence.
"Do you know what this is?" he asked, holding the packet toward her.
She shook her head wonderingly.
"It"s what I owe you." She made a gesture of deprecation. "It"s the money you lent me," he went on. "It"s a tremendous satisfaction--that at least--to be able to bring it back to you."