"About me, Mr. Cleek?"
"Yes. You spoke about there being a change in your circumstances--spoke
as though you thought I knew. I do not; but I should like to if I may.
It will perhaps explain why you are out alone and in this neighbourhood
at this time of night."
"It will," she said, with just a shadow of deeper colour coming into her
cheeks. "The house you saw me coming out of is the residence of a friend
and former schoolmate. I went there to inquire if she could help me in
any way to secure a position; and stopped later than I realised."
"Procure you a position, Miss Lorne? A position as what?"
"Companion, amanuensis, governess--anything that," with a laugh and a
blush, "'respectable young females' may do to earn a living when they
come down in the world. You may possibly have heard that my uncle, Sir
Horace, has married again. I think you must have done so, for the papers
were full of it at the time. But I forget"--quizzically--"you don't read
newspapers, do you, even when they contain accounts of your own
greatness."
"I wonder if I deserve that? At any rate, I got it," said Cleek with a
laugh. "Yes, I heard all about Sir Horace's wedding. Some four or five
months ago, wasn't it?"
"No, three--three, last Thursday, the fourteenth. A woman doesn't forget
the date of her enforced abdication. The new Lady Wyvern soon let me
know that I was a superfluous person in the household. To-day, I came to
the conclusion to leave it; and have taken the first actual step toward
doing so. A lucky step, too, I fancy; or, at least, it promises to be."
"As how?"
"My friend knows of two people who would be likely to need me: one, a
titled lady here in England, who might be 'very glad to have me'--I am
quoting that, please--as governess to her little boy. The other, a young
French girl who is returning shortly to Paris, who also might be 'glad
to have me' as companion. Of course, I would sooner remain in England,
but--well, it is nicer to be a companion than a governess; and the young
lady is very nearly my own age. Indeed, we were actually at the same
school together when we were very little girls."
"I see," said Cleek, a trifle gloomily. "So then it is possible that it
will, eventually, be the young French lady and--Paris, in future. When,
do you fancy? Soon?"
"Oh, I don't know about that. I haven't quite made up my mind as yet
which of the two it will be. And then there's the application to be sent
afterwards."
"Still, it will be one of the two certainly?"
"Oh, yes. I shall have to earn my living in future, you know; so,
naturally, of course--" She gave her shoulder an eloquent upward
movement, and let the rest go by default.
Cleek did not speak for a moment: merely walked on beside her--a ridge
between his eyebrows and his lower lip sucked in; as if he were mentally
debating upon something and was afraid he might speak incautiously. But
of a sudden:
"Miss Lorne," he said, in a curiously tense voice, "may I ask you
something? Let us say that you had set your heart upon obtaining one or
the other of these two positions--set it so entirely that life wouldn't
be worth a straw to you if you didn't get it. Let us say, too, that
there was something you had done, something in your past which, if
known, might utterly preclude the possibility of your obtaining what you
wanted--it is an absurd hypothesis, of course: but let us use it for the
sake of argument. We will say you had done your best to live down that
offensive 'something' done, and were still doing all that lay in your
power to atone for it; that nobody but one person shared the knowledge
of that 'something' with you, and upon his silence you could rely. Now
tell me: would you feel justified in accepting the position upon which
you had set your heart _without_ confessing the thing; or would you feel
in duty bound to speak, well knowing that it would in all human
probability be the end of all your hopes? I should like to have your
opinion upon that point, please."
"I can't see that I or anybody else could have other than the one," she
replied. "It is an age-old maxim, is it not, Mr. Cleek, that two wrongs
cannot by any possibility constitute a right? I should feel in duty
bound, in honour bound, to speak, of course. To do the other would be to
obtain the position by fraud--to steal it, as a thief steals things that
_he_ wants. No sort of atonement is possible, is even worth the name, if
it is backed up by deceit, Mr. Cleek."
"Even though that deceit is the only thing that could give you your
heart's desire? The only thing that could open the Gates of Heaven for
you?"
"The 'Gates of Heaven,' as you put it, can never be opened with a lie,
Mr. Cleek. They might be opened by the very thing of which you
speak--confession. I think I should take my chances upon that. At any
rate, if I failed, I should at least have preserved my self-respect and
done more to merit what I wanted than if I had secured it by treachery.
Think of the boy you helped a little while ago. How much respect will
you have for him if he never lives up to his promise; never goes to
Clarges Street at all? Yet if he does live up to it, will he not be
doubly worth the saving? But please!" with a sudden change from
seriousness to gaiety, "if I am to be led into sermonizing, might I not
know what it is all about? I shall be right, shall I not, in supposing
that all this is merely the preface to something else?"
"Either the Preface or--the Finis," said Cleek, with a deeply drawn
breath. "Still, as you say, no atonement is worth calling an atonement
if it is based upon fraud; and so--Miss Lorne, I am going to ask you to
indulge in yet another little flight of fancy. Carry your mind back,
will you, to the night when your cousin--to the night two years ago when
Sir Horace Wyvern's daughter had her wedding presents stolen and you, I
believe, had rather a trying moment with that fellow who was known as
'The Vanishing Cracksman.' You can remember it, can you not?"
"Remember it? I shall never forget it. I thought, when the police ran
down stairs and left me with him, that I was talking to Mr. Narkom. I
think I nearly went daft with terror when I found out that it was he."
"And you found it out only through his telling you, did you not?
Afterward, I am told, the police found you lying fainting at the foot of
the stairs. The man had touched you, spoken to you, even caught up your
hand and put it to his lips? Can you remember what he said when he did
that? Can you?"
"Yes," she answered, with a little shudder of recollection. "For weeks
afterward I used to wake up in the middle of the night thinking of it
and going cold all over. He said, 'You have come down into Hell and
lifted me out. Under God, you shall lift me into Heaven as well!'"
"And perhaps you shall," said Cleek, stopping short and uncovering his
head. "At any rate, I'll not attempt to win it by fraud. Miss Lorne, I
am that man. I am the 'Vanishing Cracksman' of those other days. I've
walked the 'straight path' since the moment I kissed your hand."
She said nothing, made no faintest sound. She couldn't--all the
strength, all the power to do anything but simply stand and look at him
had gone out of her. But even so, she was conscious--dimly but yet
conscious--of a feeling of relief that they had come at last close to
the end of the heath, that there was the faint glow of lights dimly
observable through the enfolding mist, and that there was the rumble of
wheels, the pulse of life, the law-guarded paths of the city's streets
beyond.