CONFESSIONS
A groping hand touched her arm; bandaged fingers sought to feel who
she was. Behind her sounded a drowsy incoherent murmur. The snarl of
the wolf had roused the sleeper from his torpor.
"Hush--hush!" she whispered. "It is all well. I am here by you. Lie
still."
"Isobel!" he murmured. "Isobel!"
"Yes, dear!" she soothed. "I am here. Rest--go to sleep again. All is
well."
"All is--?" He roused a little more. "You say--Then he is safe! They
have brought him up--out of that hell!"
She could not lie outright. "He will soon be safe. By morning help
will have come to us. As soon as the men can see to go down, they will
descend for him. They will bring him up the way that you have shown
us!"
Her voice quivered with pride of what he had done. She drew up his
hand and pressed her lips tenderly upon the bandages.
Had the caress been a burn, he could not have more quickly snatched
the hand away. He sought to rise, and struck his head against the
overhanging rock.
"Where am I? Let me out!" he said.
"No, you must not! Lie still! You must not!" she remonstrated.
"Lie still?" he repeated. "Lie still! with him down there--alone!"
"But it is night--midnight. It will be hours before even the moon
rises."
"And he down there--alone! Help me make ready. I am going down to
him."
"Going down? But you cannot! It is midnight!"
"There is a lantern. I shall take that. It will be easier than in the
daytime, for I shall not see those sickening precipices below."
He sought to creep out past her. She clutched his arm.
"No, no! do not go! There is no need! Wait until they come. You have
done your share--far more than your share! Wait!"
"I cannot," he replied. "I must go down to him. I have no right to be
up here, and he still down there."
"You must!" she urged, clinging tighter to his arm. "You may fall. I
am afraid! I cannot bear it! Do not go! Stay with me--say that you
will stay with me--dearest!"
"Good God!" he cried, tearing himself away from her, "To let you say
it--say it to me!"
"Dearest!" she repeated. "Dearest, do not go! There is no need! I
cannot bear it! Do not go!"
"No need? My God! When I could fling myself over, if it were not for
him! To have let you say it--to me--to a liar! thief! murderer!"
"Dearest!" she whispered. "Hush! You are delirious--you do not
know--"
"It is you who do not know!" he cried. "But you shall--everything--all
my cowardly baseness!" The confession burst from him in a torrent of
self-denunciation--"That trip to town, when we went to fetch them, I
lied to you about those bridge plans. It was not true that I found
them. He handed them to me. He took no receipt. I looked at them and
saw how wonderful they were. I stole them. My father had threatened to
cast me off if I did not do something worth while. I was desperate. So
I stole your brother's plans. I copied them--"
"You know about Tom!" she interrupted. "But of course. You saw me tell
him, there at the ravine."
"I saw you put your arms about his neck and kiss him; but I did not
hear--I did not see the truth. I believed--that is the worst of it
all--I believed it possible that you--_you_--!... That devil Gowan....
But that is no excuse. Had I not already doubted you.... And I went
down--down into hell, with only one purpose--to make certain that he
never should come up again!"
"Dear Christ!" whispered the girl--"Dear Christ! He has gone mad!"
"No, Isobel," he said, his voice slow and dead with the calm of utter
despair, "I am not mad. I have never been mad except for a little
while after you put your arms about his neck. No--For years I was a
fool, a profligate fool, wasting my life as I wasted all those
thousands of dollars that I had not earned. I turned thief--a
despicable sneak thief. At last the dirty crime found me out. I
received a small share of the punishment that I deserved. Then you
took me in--without question--treated me as a man. God knows I tried
to be one!"
"You were!--you are!" she broke in. "This is all a mistake--a cruel,
hideous mistake!"
"I tried to go," he went on unflinchingly. "You urged me to stay. I
was weak. I could not force myself to leave you."
"Because--because!" she murmured.
"All the more reason why I should have gone," he replied. "But I was
weak, unfit. I lied to you and won your pity. You gave me the chance
to stay and prove myself what I am. Down there, when he told me what I
should have guessed--what I must have guessed had not my own baseness
blinded me to the truth--when he told me he was your brother, I saw
myself, my real self,--my shriveled, black, hellish soul. Now you see
why I must go down again. I can never make reparation for what I have
done. But I can at least go down to him."
"You take all the blame on yourself!" she protested. "What if I had
confessed my secret, there at the first, when Tom sprang down from the
car and I knew him."
"If you had told, then I should not have been tempted to doubt you,
and I should have gone on, it might have been forever, with that lie
and that theft between us--and I should not have been forced to see,
as I now see, my absolute unworthiness of you."
"Of me!" she cried shrilly, and she burst into wild hysterical
laughter. It broke off as abruptly as it began. "Unworthy of me--of
me? the daughter of a drunken mother, the sister of a girl who--" A
sob choked her. She went on desperately: "You have told me all. But
I--do you not wonder why I kept silent--why I denied Mary by my
silence? You say you sought to harm Tom--down there. You did not know
he was my brother. You thought he would harm me. Is it not so?"
"I doubted you!"
"Why? Because I failed to tell the truth. I feared to hurt him--to
make trouble between him and his rich, high-bred wife. As if I should
not have known better the moment I saw Genevieve! Dear sister! she
knows all. But you--Either I should have spoken, or I should have
hidden all my fondness for him. But I could not hide my love for
him--and I was ashamed to tell."
"Ashamed--you?"
"We lived in the slums. They told me my father was a big man, a man
such as Tom is now. He was a railroad engineer. He was killed when I
was a baby. Then we sank into the slums. My mother--she died when I
was twelve. There was then only Mary and I and Tom. He could make only
a little, working at odd jobs. Mary and I worked in a factory. Even
she was under age. When I was going on fourteen there came a terrible
winter when thousands were out of work. We almost starved."
"You--starved!" murmured Ashton. "Starved! And I was starting in at
college, flinging away money!"
"Tom tried to force people to let him work," the girl went on
drearily. "He was violent. They put him in jail. Soon Mary and I had
nothing left. There was no work for us. We had sold everything that
anyone would buy. The rent was overdue. They turned us out--on the
streets.... I was too young; but Mary.... She found a place where I
could stay. They were decent people, but hard....
"The weather was bitterly cold. She was taken sick. When the people
with whom I was staying heard what she had done, they refused to help.
I begged in the street. I was very small and thin. The--the beasts did
not trouble me. Then, when Mary was very sick, I met Daddy. I begged
from him. He did not give me a nickel and pass on. He stopped and made
me talk--he made me take him to Mary.
"He had her moved to the best hospital.... It was too late.... I also
had pneumonia. They said I would die. But Daddy brought me home just
as soon as I could be moved. The railroad was then a hundred miles
from Dry Mesa. But he kept me wrapped in furs, and all the way he
carried me in his arms. Do you wonder why I love him so?... That is
all. You see now why I shrank from telling--why I denied Mary."
"She is in Heaven," said Ashton--"in Heaven, where some day you will
go. But I--I--" She could see no more than the vague blotch of his
white face in the darkness, but his voice told her the anguish of his
look. "He was right--your brother. He told me that we always take with
us the heaven or the hell that we each have made for ourselves.... I
have lost you.... You know now why I am going down to do the little
that I can do."
"You are going down?" she asked wonderingly. "You still say that you
are going down? Yet I have told you about--Mary!"
"If you were she, I still would be utterly unfit to look you in the
face. I shall go to the camp for the lantern. There were other gloves
and some of my clothing."
"They are all here."
"Show me where they are, and get ready the lantern and bandages and a
sack of food."
"You are going down," she acquiesced. "You are going to Tom. And you
are coming up with him--to me!"
"That is too much. I doubted you. Where are those things? He is
waiting down there alone."
"Here is his child, my nephew," she said. "Hold him while I go for
what you need. Here is my pistol. The man who shot you, who twice
tried to murder you--he is somewhere up here. He will not harm me. But
you--If he comes creeping in on you here, shoot him as you would shoot
a coyote."
"The man who shot me? He is up here?"
"You have seen him every day since that first day I met you," replied
the girl. "His name is Gowan."
"_Gowan?_"
"Kid Gowan, murderer! I saw his eyes as he looked at you, lying down
there on the brink. Then I knew."
"But--if he--Where is Genevieve? I cannot go and leave you alone."
"You can--you must! He is a coward. He dare not follow you down that
terrible place. No harm will come to me if you are gone. But if he
comes back and finds you--do you not see that if he kills you, he must
also kill me? But in the morning, when the others come--Oh, why
hasn't Daddy come? All this long time since you went down into the
depths, and he not with us! If only he were here!"
"Genevieve?" again inquired Ashton.
"She has gone. She started down the mountain for help when Kid went
away. I'm so afraid for you, dear! He may be creeping back now--he may
be waiting already, close by here, in the darkness. But if he has not
heard our voices, he will go first to where you came up, and then to
the tent. Keep quiet until I return. Wait; here is cream and egg.
Drink it all."
When he had drained the bowl that she held to his lips, she crept
away. Ashton sat still, the warm, soft little body of the sleeping
baby in his arms, the pistol in his bandaged right hand. In her
excitement Isobel had forgotten his bound fingers. If Gowan had come
on him then, he would have put the baby back in under the rock, and
faced the puncher's revolver with a smile. What had he now to live
for? He had lost her. She had not yet grasped the baseness of what he
had thought and done. As soon as she realized ... And he could never
forgive himself.