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.