A short time ago, Saxon had felt stronger than all the forces of fate.
He had believed that circumstances were plastic and man invincible.
Now, as he bent forward in his chair, the South American letter
hanging in limp fingers and the coal-oil lamp on the table throwing
its circle of light on the foreign postmark and stamp of the envelope,
he realized that the battle was on. The forces of which he had been
contemptuous were to engage him at once, with no breathing space
before the combat. Viewing it all in this light, he felt the qualms of
a general who encounters an aggressive enemy before his line is drawn
and his battle front arranged.
He had so entirely persuaded himself that his duty was clear and that
he must not speak to the girl of love that now, when he had done so,
his entire plan of campaign must be revised, and new problems must be
considered. When he had been swept away on the tide that carried him
to an avowal, it had been with the vague sense of realization that,
if he spoke at all, he must tell the whole story. He had not done so,
and now came a new question: Had he the right to tell the story until,
in so far as possible, he had probed its mystery? Suppose his worst
fears proved themselves. The certainty would be little harder to
confess than the presumption and the suspense. Suppose, on the other
hand, the fighting chance to which every man clings should, after all,
acquit him? Would it not be needless cruelty to inflict on her the
fears that harried his own thoughts? Must he not try first to arm
himself with a definite report for, or against, himself?
After all, he argued weakly, or perhaps it was the devil's advocate
that whispered the insidious counsel, there might be a mistake. The
man of Ribero's story might still be some one else. He had never felt
the instincts of murder. Surely, he had not been the embezzler, the
libertine, the assassin! But, in answer to that argument, his colder
logic contended there might have been to his present Dr. Jekyll a Mr.
Hyde of the past. The letter he held in his hand of course meant
nothing more than that Ribero had talked to some one. It might be
merely the fault of some idle gossip in a Latin-American cafe, when
the claret flowed too freely. The writer, this unknown "H. S. R.," had
probably taken Ribero's testimony at its face value. Then, out of the
page arose insistently the one sentence that did mean something more,
the new link in a chain of definite conclusion. "Since you beat it to
God's Country and went West--" That was the new evidence this
anonymous witness had contributed. He had certainly gone West!
Assuredly, he must go to South America, and prosecute himself. To do
this meant to thrust himself into a situation that held a hundred
chances, but there was no one else who could determine it for him. It
was not merely a matter of collecting and sifting evidence. It was
also a test of subjecting his dormant memory to the stimulus of place
and sights and sounds and smells. When he stood at the spot where
Carter had faced his executioners, surely, if he were Carter, he would
awaken to self-recognition. He would slip away on some pretext, and
try out the issue, and then, when he spoke to Duska, he could speak
in definite terms. And if he were the culprit? The question came back
as surely as the pendulum swings to the bottom of the arc, and rested
at the hideous conviction that he must be the malefactor. Then, Saxon
rose and paced the floor, his hand convulsively crushing the letter
into a crumpled wad.
Well, he would not come back! If that were his world, he would not
reenter it. He was willing to try himself--to be his own prosecutor,
but, if the thing spelled a sentence of disgrace, he reserved the
right to be also his own executioner.
Then, the devil's advocate again whispered seductively into his
perplexity.
Suppose he went and tested the environment, searching conscience and
memory--and suppose no monitor gave him an answer. Would he not then
have the right to assume his innocence? Would he not have the right to
feel certain that his memory, so stimulated and still inactive, was
not only sleeping, but dead? Would he not be justified in dismissing
the fear of a future awakening, and, as Steele had suggested, in
going forward in the person of Robert A. Saxon, abandoning the past as
completely as he had perhaps abandoned previous incarnations?
So, for the time, he stilled his fears, and under his brush the
canvases became more wonderful than they had ever been. He had Duska
at his side, not only in the old intimacy, but in the new and more
wonderful intimacy that had come of her acknowledged love. He would
finish the half-dozen pictures needed to complete the consignment for
the Eastern and European exhibits, then he would start on his journey.
A week later, Saxon took Duska to a dance at the club-house on the top
of one of the hills of the ridge, and, after she had tired of dancing,
they had gone to a point where the brow of the knob ran out to a
jutting promontory of rock. It was a cape in the dim sea of night mist
which hung upon, and shrouded, the flats below. Beyond the reaches of
silver gray, the more distant hills rose in mystic shadow-shapes of
deep cobalt. There were stars overhead, but they were pale in the
whiter light of the moon, and all the world was painted, as the moon
will paint it, in silvers and blues.
Back of them was the softened waltz-music that drifted from the
club-house and the bright patches of color where the Chinese lanterns
swung among the trees.
As they talked, the man felt with renewed force that the girl had
given him her love in the wonderful way of one who gives but once, and
gives all without stint or reserve. It was as though she had presented
him unconditionally with the key to the archives of her heart, and
made him possessor of the unspent wealth of all the Incas.
Suddenly, he realized that his plan of leaving her without
explanation, on a quest that might permit no return, was meeting her
gift with half-confidence and deception. What he did with himself now,
he did with her property. He was not at liberty to act without her
full understanding and sympathy in his undertakings. The plan was one
of infinite brutality.
He must tell her everything, and then go. He struck a match for his
cigar, to give himself a moment of arranging his words, and, as he
stood shielding the light against a faintly stirring breeze, the
miniature glare fell on her delicately chiseled lips and nose and
chin. Her expression made him hesitate. She was very young, very
innocently childlike and very happy. To tell her now would be like
spoiling a little girls' party. It must be told soon, but not while
the dance music was still in their ears and the waxy smell of the
dance candles still in their nostrils.
When he left her at Horton House, he did not at once return to the
cabin. He wanted the open skies for his thoughts, and there was no
hope of sleep.
He retraced his steps from the road, and wandered into the
old-fashioned garden. At last, he halted by the seat where he had
posed her for the portrait. The moon was sinking, and the shadows of
the garden wall and trees and shrubs fell in long, fantastic angles
across the silvered earth. The house itself was dark except where the
panes of her window still glowed. Standing between the tall stalks of
the hollyhocks, he held his watch up to the moon. It was half-past two
o'clock.
Then, he looked up and started with surprise as he saw her standing
in the path before him. At first, he thought that his imagination had
projected her there. Since she had left him at the stairs, the picture
she had made in her white gown and red roses had been vividly
permanent, though she herself had gone.
But, now, her voice was real.
"Do you prowl under my windows all night, kind sir?" she laughed,
happily. "I believe you must be almost as much in love as I am."
The man reached forward, and seized her hand.
"It's morning," he said. "What are you doing here?"
"I couldn't sleep," she assured him. Then, she added serenely: "Do you
suppose that the moon shines like this every night, or that I can
always expect times like these? You know," she taunted, "it was so
hard to get you to admit that you cared that it was an achievement. I
must be appreciative, mustn't I? You are an altogether reserved and
cautious person."
He seized her in his arms with neither reserve nor caution.
"Listen," he said in an impassioned voice, "I have no right to touch
you. In five minutes, you will probably not even let me speak to you.
I had no right to speak. I had no right to tell you that I loved you!"
She did not draw away. She only looked into his eyes very solemnly.
"You had no right?" she repeated, in a bewildered voice. "Don't you
love me?"
"You don't have to ask that," he avowed. "You know it. Your own heart
can answer such questions."
"Then," she decreed with womanlike philosophy, "you had a right to say
so--because I love you, and that is settled."
"No," he expostulated, "I tell you I did not have the right. You must
forget it. You must forget everything." He was talking with mad
impetuosity.
"It is too late," she said simply. "Forget!" There was an indignant
ring in her words. "Do you think that I could forget--or that, if I
could, I would? Do you think it is a thing that happens every day?"
From a tree at the fence line came the softly lamenting note of a
small owl, and across the fields floated the strident shriek of a
lumbering night freight.
To Saxon's ears, the inconsequential sounds came with a painful
distinctness. It was only his own voice that seemed to him muffled in
a confusion of roaring noises. His lips were so dry that he had to
moisten them with his tongue.
To hesitate, to temporize, even to soften his recital, would mean
another failure in the telling of it. He must plunge in after his old
method of directness, even brutality, without preface or palliation.
Here, at all events, brutality were best. If his story appalled and
repelled her, it would be the blow that would free her from the
thraldom of the love he had unfairly stolen. If she turned from him
with loathing, at least anger would hurt her less than heartbreak.
"Do you remember the story Ribero so graphically told of the
filibuster and assassin and the firing squad in the plaza?" As he
spoke, Saxon knew with a nauseating sense of certainty that his brain
had never really doubted his identity. He had futilely argued with
himself, but it was only his eagerness of wish that had kept clamoring
concerning the possibility of a favorable solution. All the while, his
reason had convicted him. Now, as he spoke, he felt sure, as sure as
though he could really remember, and he felt also his unworthiness to
speak to her, as though it were not Saxon, but Carter, who held her in
his arms. He suddenly stepped back and held her away at arms' length,
as though he, Saxon, were snatching her from the embrace of the other
man, Carter. Then, he heard her murmuring:
"Yes, of course I remember."
"And did you notice his look of astonishment when I came? Did you
catch the covert innuendoes as he talked--the fact that he talked at
me--that he was accusing me--my God! recognizing me?"
The girl put up her hands, and brushed the hair back from her
forehead. She shook her head as though to shake off some cloud of
bewilderment and awaken herself from the shock of a nightmare. She
stood so unsteadily that the man took her arm, and led her to the
bench against the wall. There, she sank down with her face in her
hands. It seemed a century, but, when she looked up again, her face,
despite its pallor in the moonlight, was the face of one seeking
excuses for one she loves, one trying to make the impossible jibe with
fact.
"I suppose you did not catch the full significance of that narrative.
No one did except the two of us--the unmasker and the unmasked. Later,
he studied a scar on my hand. It's too dark to see, but you can feel
it."
He caught her fingers in his own. They were icy in his hot clasp, as
he pressed them against his right palm.
"Tell me how it happened. Tell me that--that the sequel was a lie!"
She imperiously commanded, yet there was under the imperiousness a
note of pleading.
"I can't," he answered. "He seemed to know the facts. I don't."
Her senses were unsteady, reeling things, and he in his evening
clothes was an axis of black and white around which the moonlit world
spun drunkenly.
Her voice was incredulous, far away.
"You don't know?" she repeated, slowly. "You don't know what you
did?"
Then, for the first time, he remembered that he had not told her of
the blind door between himself and the other years. He had presented
himself only on a plea of guilty to the charge, without even the
palliation of forgetfulness.
Slowly steeling himself for the ordeal, he went through his story. He
told it as he had told Steele, but he added to it all that he had not
told Steele--all of the certainty that was building itself against his
future out of his past. He presented the case step by step as a
prosecutor might have done, adding bit of testimony after bit of
testimony, and ending with the sentence from the letter, which told
him that he had gone West. He had played the coward long enough. Now,
he did not even mention the hope he had tried to foster, that there
might be a mistake. It was all so horribly certain that those hopes
were ghosts, and he could no longer call them from their graves. The
girl listened without a word or an interruption of any sort.
"And so," he said calmly at the end, "the possibility that I vaguely
feared has come forward. The only thing that I know of my other life
is a disgraceful thing--and ruin."
There was a long, torturing silence as she sat steadily, almost
hypnotically, gazing into his eyes.
Then, a remarkable thing happened. The girl came to her feet with the
old lithe grace that had for the moment forsaken her, leaving her a
shape of slender distress. She rose buoyantly and laughed! With a
quick step forward, she threw her arms around his neck, and stood
looking into his drawn face.
He caught at her arms almost savagely.
"Don't!" he commanded, harshly. "Don't!"
"Why?" Her question was serene.
"Because it was Robert Saxon that you loved. You sha'n't touch Carter.
I can't let Carter touch you." He was holding her wrists tightly, and
pressing her away from him.
"I have never touched Carter," she said, confidently. "They lied about
it, dear. You were never Carter."
In the white light, her upturned eyes were sure with confidence.
"Now, you listen," she ordered. "You told me a case that your
imagination has constructed from foundation to top. It is an ingenious
case. Its circumstantial evidence is skilfully woven into conviction.
They have hanged men on that sort of evidence, but here there is a
court of appeals. I know nothing about it. I have only my woman's
heart, but my woman's heart knows you. There is no guilt in you--there
never has been. You have tortured yourself because you look like a man
whose name is Carter."
She said it all so positively, so much with the manner of a decree
from the supreme bench, that, for a moment, the ghosts of hope began
to rise and gather in the man's brain; for a moment, he forgot that
this was not really the final word.
He had crucified himself in the recital to make it easier for her to
abandon him. He had told one side only, and she had seen only the
force of what he had left unsaid. If that could be possible, it might
be possible she was right. With the reaction came a wild momentary
joyousness. Then, his face grew grave again.
"I had sworn by every oath I knew," he told her, "that I would speak
no word of love to you until I was no longer anonymous. I must go to
Puerto Frio at once, and determine it."
Her arms tightened about his neck, and she stood there, her hair
brushing his face as though she would hold him away from everything
past and future except her own heart.
"No! no!" she passionately dissented. "Even if you were the man, which
you are not, you are no more responsible for that dead life than for
your acts in some other planet. You are mine now, and I am satisfied."
"But, if afterward," he went on doggedly, "if afterward I should awake
into another personality--don't you see? Neither you nor I, dearest,
can compromise with doubtful things. To us, life must be a thing clean
beyond the possibility of blot."
She still shook her head in stubborn negation.
"You gave yourself to me," she said, "and I won't let you go. You
won't wake up in another life. I won't let you--and, if you do--" she
paused, then added with a smile on her lips that seemed to settle
matters for all time--"that is a bridge we will cross when we come to
it--and we will cross it together."