“Suppose”—I had to moisten my lips before going on—“suppose she was to
play you the same trick she played you before?”
“She wouldn’t.”
In spite of his evident conviction, I pressed the question.
“But if she did?”
He threw off in a tone that seemed careless: “In that case there’d be
just one thing for me to do. I’d leave her everything I possess—I’m doing
that as it is—and, well, you can guess the rest. I—I couldn’t go through
all that again. The first time—well, I just pulled it off; but the
second—”
It was the old story. They all seemed to have the second time on the
brain. I, too, was getting it on the brain. It was like a trip-hammer
pounding in my head.
I forced myself, however, to make some foolish, semi-jovial speech in
which there was no congratulation, begging him, then, for the love of
Heaven, to clear out, as I wanted to go to sleep.
_CHAPTER XXV_
No record of the next few weeks exists for me. I suppose I must have
done things—little things. I must have gone in and out, and eaten my
meals, and fulfilled Lovey’s orders—for, lacking volition of my own, I
was entirely at his command. But the recollection of it all has passed
from me. I remember reading in some one’s reminiscences of prison life
that the weeks of solitary confinement went by; but the released prisoner
could not say how. Nothing remained with him, apparently, but a big,
black blur; and of these first weeks in New York it was all that stayed
with me.
I know that Christmas came and went, and that I spent the festival at
Atlantic City. I did this in a wild hope, which I knew was idiotic when I
formed it. I told Lovey what I was about to do; I knew he, in the course
of his valeting, which he still kept up, would tell Cantyre; I guessed
that Cantyre would tell Regina; and I hoped—it never really amounted to
hoping, I only dreamed—that Regina might find the moment a favorable one
for slipping away and joining me. Then we should actually do the thing so
impossible to plan.
But, of course, nothing came of it; and I returned to New York more
unsatisfied than I had gone away. The sense of being unsatisfied sent me
at last to Sterling Barry’s door.
You will observe that I had not talked with Regina since our last night
on board ship. On the morning of landing her quick movements, as
compared with my slow, lumbering ones, enabled her to elude me. Since
our landing my will had been positively paralyzed. Those words of hers,
“Oh, Frank, I hope you won’t make me!” were always in my memory; but the
very sense that I could use the power held me back from doing it. I meant
to use it; but as each minute came round when I might have taken a step
toward that end I seemed to fall backward, like the men who went out with
swords and staves to take the Christ.
But two days after my return from Atlantic City I came to the conclusion
that I could wait no longer. I could go and call on her at least. For
the family it would mean no more than that I had come to offer my
congratulations. For her—but I could tell that only by being face to face
with her.
The old manservant recognized me on coming to the door. He was sorry
that Miss Barry had gone to tea with Miss van Elstine, and was sure his
mistress would be sorry, too. Moreover, they had all heard of my prowess
in battle, and were proud of me.
So I drove round in my taxi to Annette’s.
The maid would have ushered me straight up to the library, but I
preferred to send in my card. As I was being conducted up-stairs a minute
later I had the privilege of hearing a few words which I am sure Annette
intended for my ear.
“Well, I don’t mind this once, Regina; but I can’t have it going on....
Yes, I know it’s an accident; but it’s an accident that mustn’t continue
to happen. The very fact that he’s my cousin obliges me to be the more
careful. It wouldn’t be fair to your father and mother if I were to let
you come here—”
“But, Annette, this once is all I’m asking for.”
“And all I mean to grant.”
I could tell by Annette’s voice that she was retreating to another room,
so that by the time I entered Regina stood there alone. Before I knew
what I was doing I held both her hands in mine and was kissing them.
It is an odd fact that on raising my eyes I saw her features for the
first time since that summer afternoon at Rosyth. On board ship she had
always worn the yashmak; and on the dock she had been too far away to
allow of my seeing more than that she was there.
The face I saw now was not like Annette’s, untouched by the passage of
time and suffering and world agony. You might have said that in its
shadows and lines and intensities the whole history of the epoch was
expressed. It was one of those twentieth-century faces—they are women’s
faces, as a rule—on which the heroic in our time has stamped itself in
lineaments which neither paint nor marble could reproduce. It flashed on
me that the transmigrated soul had traveled farther than I had suspected.
I don’t know what we said to each other at first. They were no more
than broken things, not to be set down by the pen. When I came to the
consciousness of my actual words I was saying, “I’m going to make you,
Regina; I’m going to make you.”
She responded like a child who recognizes power, but has no questionings
as to right and wrong.
“Are you, Frank? How?”
“In any way that suggests itself.” I added, helplessly, “I don’t know
how.”
“I’ll do whatever you tell me,” she said, simply and submissively.
“Then will you just walk away with me some afternoon—and be
married—without saying anything to any one?”
“If you say so.”
“When shall we do it?”
“Whenever you like.”
“Next week?”
“If that suits you.”
“Would it suit you?”
She bent her head and was silent. I repeated the question with more
insistence.
“Would it suit you, Regina?”
“There’s no question of suiting me. I’ve got myself where I can’t be”—she
smiled, a twitching, nervous smile—“where I can’t be suited.”
“Do you mean that you’d come with me—when you wouldn’t want to?”
“Something like that.”
“Why should you?”
“I’ve told you that. I’ve—I’ve let you see it—in what I’ve been doing for
the past two years.”
“So that I’m absolutely master?”
“That’s it.”
I turned away from her, walking to the other end of the long room. When I
came back she was standing as I had left her, humbly, with eyes downcast,
like a slave-girl put up for sale.