It struck him that she was emphasizing that point for a purpose--to bring him to another point still. He took a few seconds to reflect before deciding that he would follow her lead without further hanging back.
"I shouldn"t have returned to New York if I hadn"t become engaged to Miss Colfax. You know about that, don"t you? I think she meant to tell you."
She inclined her head a.s.sentingly, without words. He noticed her dark eyes resting on him with a kind of pity. He had cherished a faint hope--the very faintest--that she might welcome what he had just said sympathetically. In the few minutes during which she remained silent that hope died.
"I suppose," she said, gently, "that you became engaged to Evie before knowing who she was?"
"I fell in love with her before knowing who she was. I"m afraid that when I actually asked her to marry me I had heard all there was to learn."
"Then why did you do it?"
He shrugged his shoulders with a movement acquired by long residence among Latins. His smile conveyed the impossibility of explaining himself in a sentence.
"I"ll tell you all about it, if you"d like to hear."
"I should like it very much. Remember, I know nothing of what happened after--after--"
He noticed a shade of confusion in her manner, and hastened to begin his narrative.
Somewhat to her surprise, he sketched his facts in lightly, but dwelt strongly on the mental and moral necessities his situation forced on him.
He related with some detail the formation of his creed of conduct in the dawn on Lake Champlain, and showed her that according to its tenets he was permitted a kind of action that in other men might be reprehensible. He came to the story of Evie last of all, and allowed her to see how dominating a part Fate, or Predestination had played in evolving it.
"So you see," he ended, "it was too late then to do anything--but to yield."
"Or withdraw," she added, softly.
He stared at her a moment, his body bent slightly forward his elbows resting on the arms of his chair. As a matter of fact, he was thinking less of her words than of her beauty--so much n.o.bler in type than he remembered it.
"Yes," he returned, quietly, "I can see that it would strike you in that way. So it did me--at first. But I had to look at the subject all round--"
"I don"t need to do that."
He stared at her again. There was a decision in her words which he found hard to reconcile with the pity in her eyes and the gentle softness of her smile.
"You mean that you don"t want to take my--necessities--into consideration."
"I mean that when I see the one thing right to do, I don"t have to look any further."
"The one thing right to do--for you?--or for me?"
"There"s no reason why I should intervene at all. I look to you to save me from the necessity."
He hesitated a minute before deciding whether to hedge or to meet her squarely.
"By giving up Evie and--clearing out," he said, with a perceptible hint of defiance.
"I shouldn"t lay stress on your--clearing out."
"But you would on my giving up Evie?"
"Don"t you see," she began, in an explanatory tone, "I, in my own person, have nothing to do with it? It isn"t for me to say this should be done or that. You can"t imagine how hard it is for me to say anything at all; and if I speak, it isn"t as myself--it"s as the voice of a situation. You must understand as well as I do what that situation imposes."
"But I don"t intend that a situation shall impose anything--on me. I mean to act as master--"
"But I"m neither so independent nor so strong--nor is Evie. You don"t consider her."
"I don"t have to consider any one. When I make Evie happy I do all that can be asked of me."
"No, you would be called on to _keep_ her happy. And she couldn"t remain happy if she were married to you. It isn"t possible. She couldn"t live with you any more than--than a humming-bird could live with a hawk."
They both smiled, rather nervously.
"But I"m not a hawk," he insisted. "I"m much more a humming-bird than you imagine. You think me some sort of creature of prey because you believe--that I did--what I was accused of--"
The circ.u.mstances seemed so far off from him now, so incongruous with what he had become, that he reverted to them with difficulty.
"I don"t attach any importance to that," she said, with a tranquillity that startled him. "I suppose I ought to, but I never have. If you killed your uncle, it seems to me--very natural. He provoked you. He deserved it.
My father would have done it certainly."
"But I didn"t, you see. That puts another color on the case."
"It doesn"t for me. And it doesn"t, as it affects Evie. Whether you"re innocent or guilty--and I don"t say I think you to be guilty--I"ve never thought much about it--but whether you"re guilty or not, your life is the kind of tragedy Evie couldn"t share. It would kill her."
"It wouldn"t kill her, if she didn"t know anything about it."
"But she would know. You can"t keep that sort of thing from a wife. She wouldn"t be married to you a year before she had discovered that you were--a--"
"An escaped convict. Why not say it?"
"I wasn"t going to say it. But at least she would know that you were a man who was pretending to be--something that he wasn"t."
"You mean an impostor. Well, I"ve already explained to you that I"m an impostor only because Society itself has made me one, I"m not to blame--"
"I quite see the force of that. But Evie wouldn"t. Don"t you understand?
That"s my point. She would only see the horror of it, and she would be overwhelmed. It wouldn"t matter to her that you could bring forward arguments in your own defence. She wouldn"t be capable of understanding them. You must see for yourself that mentally--and spiritually--just as bodily--she"s as fragile as a b.u.t.terfly. She couldn"t withstand a storm.
She"d be crushed by it."
"I don"t think you do her justice. If she were to discover--I mean, if the worst were to come to the worst--well, you can see how it"s been with yourself. You"ve known from the beginning all there is to know--and yet--"
"I"m different."
She meant the brief statement to divert his attention from himself, but she perceived that it aroused a flash of self-consciousness in both. While she could hear herself saying inwardly, "I"d rather go on waiting for him--uselessly," he was listening to a silvery voice, as it lisped the words, "Dear mamma used to think she was in love with some one; we didn"t know anything about it." Each reverted to the memory of the lakeside scene in which he had said, "My life will belong to you ... a thing for you to dispose of ..." and each was afraid that the other was doing so.
All at once she saw herself as she fancied he must see her--a woman claiming the fulfilment of an old promise, the payment of a long-standing debt. He must think she was making Evie a pretext in her fight for her own hand. His vow--if it was a vow--had been the germ of so much romance in her mind that she ascribed it to a place in the foreground of his. In all she was saying he would understand a demand on her part that he should make it good. Very well, then; if he could do her such injustice, he must do it. She could not permit the fear of it to inspire her with moral cowardice or deter her from doing what was right.
Nevertheless, it helped her to control her agitation to rise and ring for tea. She felt the need of some commonplace action to a.s.sure herself and him that now, at last, she was outside the realm of the romantic. He rose as she did, to forestall her at the bell; and as the servant entered with the tray, they moved together into the embrasure of the wide bay-window.
Down below the autumn colors were fading, while leaves, golden-yellow or blood-red, were being swirled along the ground.