Itwas early in June when the pneumatic drill in the Little Myriad was smashed by a premature blast, and the master of the mine was constrained to make a flying trip to Denver to replace it. As a matter of course, if not, indeed, of necessity, Myra went with him. They traveled by the night train, breakfasted on canned viands out of the Pullman buffet, and so took Constance by surprise.
Myra had projects in view, some Utopian and others more Utopian, with her relatives for nuclei; and when Richard the untactful had been sent about his machinery business, she settled down for a persuasive day with Constance. Now Constance had been taken unawares, but she was of those who fight best at a disadvantage, and the end of the day found the Utopian projects still in air, being held in suspension by an obstinate young person who steadily refused to make of herself a vessel meet for condolence and cousinly beneficence.
"It's no use, cuzzy dear; you shall have an option on the help stock when there is any for sale, but at present there are no quotations."
Thus Connie, at the very end of the persuasive day. Upon which the young wife, with patience outwearing or outworn, retorts smartly:—
"I suppose you think it's heroic—your living like this; but it isn't. It is just plain poverty pride, which is all well enough to keep the crowd out, but which is simply wicked when it makes you shut the door in our faces. Think of it—you living here in three rooms at the top of a block when the Myriad has begun to pay dividends! I didn't mean to tell you just yet, but Dick is going to buy back the Colfax Avenue house, and it shall stand empty till doomsday if you won't go and live in it."
In times not long past Connie would have returned railing for railing—with interest added; but the reproachful day had been no less trying to her than to Myra, and the poverty fight—and some others—were sore upon her. Hence her disclaimer was of courageous meekness, with a smile of loving appreciation to pave the way.
"I hope Dick will do no such preposterous thing—unless you want it for yourselves. You know it would be quite out of the question for us to take it. Or to do anything but make the best of what has happened," she added.
Myra was standing at a window, looking down into the street where the early dusk was beginning to prick out the point-like coruscations of the arc-lights. There was that in Connie's eyes which beckoned tears to eyes sympathetic; and she found it easier to go on with her back turned upon the room and its other occupant.
"To make the best of it, yes; but you are not making the best of it. Or, if you are, the best is miserablybad. You are looking thin and wretched, as if—as if you didn't get enough to eat."
There was a touch of the old-time resilience in Connie's laugh. "How can you tell when you're not looking at me? Indeed, it hasn't come to that yet. We have enough, and a little to spare for those who have less."
Myra had been searching earnestly all day for some little rift into which the wedge of helpfulness might be driven, and here was an opening—of the vicarious sort.
"Won't you let me be your purseholder for those who have less, Connie? That is the very least you can do."
Constance willed it thankfully. After the trying day of refusals it was grateful to find something that could be conceded.
"I believe I told you once that I wouldn't be your proxy in that way, didn't I? But I will, now. You are so much better than your theories, Myra."
Myra left the window at that, wrote a generous check before the concession should have time to shrink in the cooling, and then went over to sit on the denim-covered lounge with her arm around her cousin's waist.
"Now that you have begun to be reasonable, won't you go a step farther, Connie, dear? I know there are troubles,—lots of them besides the pinching. Can't you lean on me just a little bit? I do so want to help you."
Connie did it literally, with her face on Myra'sshoulder and a sob at the catching of her breath. Myra let her take her own time, as a judicious comforter will, and when the words came they wrought themselves into a confession.
"Oh, Myra, I thought I was so strong, and I'm not!" she wept. "The bullet in a gun hasn't less to say about where it shall be sent. I said it wasn't the pinch, but it is—or part of it is. Poppa has set his heart upon trying the mountains again, old as he is, and he can't go because—because there isn't money enough to outfit him with what he could carry on his back!"
"And you would have let me go without telling me!" said Myra reproachfully. "He shall have a whole pack train of 'grub stake,'—is that what I should say?—and you shall come and stay with us while he is away. Consider that a trouble past, and tell me some more. You don't know how delicious it is to be permitted to pose as a small god in a car."
"Yes, I do," Connie responded, out of a heartful of similar ecstasies. "But it isn't a trouble past: he won't let you do it. Everybody has been offering to lend him money, and he won't take it."
"He will have to take it from me," said Myra, with prompt decision. "I'll make him. And when he goes, you will come to us, won't you?"
Constance looked up with a smile shining through the tears. "You're good, Myra, just like Dick! But I can't, you know. I must stay here."
"Why must you?" To the querist there seemed to be sufficiently good reasons, from the point ofview of the proprieties, for setting Connie's decision aside mandatorily, but Myra had grown warier if not wiser in her year of cousin-kenning.
"There are reasons,—duties which I must not shirk."
"Are they namable?"
"Yes; Margaret is the name of one of them."
Myra's disapproval found vent in gentle foot-tappings. To the moderately compassionate on-looker it would seem that Constance had long since filled that measure of responsibility,—filled and heaped it to overflowing. But again the experienced one was discreet.
"As Dick would put it, you have 'angeled' Margaret for a year and more. Isn't she yet able to stand alone?"
Connie's answer was prompt and decisive. "Quite as well able as the best of us would be under similar conditions."
"I wouldn't make it conditional; but we've never been able to keep step in that journey. Why is Margaret's case exceptional?"
"Did I say it was? It isn't. She is just one of any number of poor girls who are trying to live honestly, with the barriers of innocence all down and an overwhelming temptation always beckoning."
Myra shook her head. "That is making temptation a constraint, when it can never be more than a lure. I must confess I can't get far enough away from the conventional point of view to understand how a young woman like Margaret, who has beenlifted and carried and set fairly upon her feet, could be tempted to go back to the utter misery and degradation of the other life."
Constance spoke first to the sophism, and then to the particular instance.
"It is not true that temptation is always a lure. It is oftener a constraint. And you say you can't understand. It is terribly simple. They sin first for a thing which they mistake for love; but after that it is for bread and meat, and surcease from toil which has become a mere frenzied struggle to keep body and soul together. You don't know what it is to be poor, Myra,—with the barriers down. Have you any idea how much Margaret earned last week, working steadily the six days and deep into the nights?"
"Oh, not very much, I suppose. But her necessities are not large."
"Are they not? They are as large as yours or mine. She must eat and drink and have a bed to sleep on and clothes to cover her. And to provide these she was paid three dollars and eighty-five cents for her week's work; and two dollars of that had to go for rent. Is the temptation a lure or a constraint in her case?"
Myra was silenced, if not convinced, and she went back to the fact existent with sympathy no more than seemingly aloof.
"You hinted at Margaret's peculiar besetment in one of your letters. Is that what you have to stay and fight?"
Constance nodded assent.
"I have been hoping you were mistaken. Dick is still loyally incredulous. Isn't there a chance that you or Tommie, or both of you, have taken too much for granted?"
Connie's "No" was almost inaudible, and there was chastened sorrow in her voice when she went on to tell how Tommie had seen Jeffard and Margaret together, not once, but many times; how the man was always persuading, and the woman, reluctant at first, was visibly yielding; how within a week Tommie had seen Jeffard give her money.
"And she took it?" Myra queried.
"She didn't want to take it. Tommie says she almost fought with him to make him take it back. But he wouldn't."
Myra's sympathy circled down, but it alighted upon Connie. "You poor dear! after all your loving-kindnesses and helpings! It's miserable; but you can't do anything if you stay."
"Yes, I can. I couldn't stay alone, of course, and she will give up her room and come here to live with me. That will give me a better hold on her than I have now."
"But if you had a hundred eyes you couldn't safeguard her against her will!"
"No; but it isn't her will,—it's his. And he will not come here."
Myra's brows went together in a little frown of righteous indignation. "I should hope not,—the wretch! You were right, after all, Connie, and I'llretract all the charitable things Dick wanted me to say. He is too despicable"—
It was Connie's hand on the accusing lips that cut short the indignant arraignment.
"Please don't!" she pleaded. "He is all that you can say or think, but my ears are weary with my own repetitions of it."
Myra took the hand from her lips and held it fast while she tried to search her cousin's face. But the gathering dusk had mounted from the level of the street to that of the upper room, and it baffled the eye-questioning.
"Connie Elliott! I more than half believe"—She stopped abruptly, as if there had been some dumb protest of the imprisoned hand, and then went on with a swift change from accusation to gentle reproach. "I believe you have only just begun to tell me your troubles,—and I've been with you all day! What are some more of them?"
"I have told you the worst of them,—or at least that part of them which makes it impossible for me to go away. But there is another reason why I ought to stay."
"Is that one namable, too?"
"Yes; but perhaps you won't understand. And you will be sure to tell me it isn't proper. I think one of Mr. Lansdale's few pleasures is his coming here."
"Few remaining pleasures, you would say, if you were not too tender-hearted. Is it wise, Connie?"
"Why not?—if it is a comfort to him?"
Myra hesitated, not because she had nothing to say, but because she knew not how to say the thing demanded.
"You haven't given me leave to be quite frank with you, Connie. But it seems to me that your kindness in this case is—is mistaken kindness."
Constance's rejoinder was merely an underthought slipping the leash. "It is not to be expected that any one would understand," she said.
"But I do understand," Myra asserted, this time with better confidence. "I'm not supposed to have the slightest inkling of your feelings,—you've never lisped a word to me,—but Mr. Lansdale's motives are plain enough to be read in the dark. If he were a well man he would have asked you to marry him long ago."
"Do you think so?" said Constance half absently. "I'm not so sure about that. He is far away from home and wretchedly ill; and he has many acquaintances and few real friends."
"But he loves you," Myra persisted.
"He has never said anything like that to me."
"It is quite possible that he never will, in view of the insurmountable obstacle."
"His ill-health, you mean? Myra, dear, you surely know love better than that—now. Love is the one thing which will both sow and reap even in the day when the heavens are of brass and the earth is a barren desert."
The under-roar of traffic in the street made the silence in the upper room more effective by contrast;like the sense of isolation which is often sharpest in a jostling throng. Myra rose and went to the window again, coming back presently to stand over Constance and say, "I suppose it is ordained that you should be a martyr to somebody or something, Connie, dear; and when the time comes I'm not going to say you nay, because I think you will be happier that way. If Mr. Lansdale should be tempted to say that which I am sure he has determined not to say, is your answer ready?"
Connie's hands were clasped over one knee, and the poise was of introspective beatitude. But the answer to Myra's query was not irrelevant.
"He is the truest of gentlemen; what would your answer be, Myra?"
It was the young wife in Myra Bartrow, that precious bit of clay as yet plastic under the hand of the master-potter, that prompted the steadfast reply.
"If I loved him as I ought, I should pray God to make me unselfish enough to say yes, Connie."
"So should I," said Constance simply; and Myra made the lighting of the lamp an excuse for the diversion which the three soft-spoken words demanded. And when she went back to the matter of fact, she touched lightly upon what she conceived to be a wound yet far from healing.
"You have silenced me, Connie, but I can at least provide for the contingency. If the event shapes itself so that you are free to come to us, don't let Margaret stand in the way. Bring her with you, and we'll find room and work for her."
Connie's eyes were shining, but there was a loving smile struggling with the tears. "I said you were good, like Dick, Myra, dear, and I can't put it any stronger. If I don't take you at your word, it will not be for anything you have left unsaid. Isn't that Dick coming?"
It was. There was a double step in the corridor, and Bartrow came in with Stephen Elliott. Since the battle persuasive with the daughter had kept her single-eyed, Myra had had but brief glimpses of the father during the day; but now she remarked that his step was a little less firmly planted than it had been in that holiday time when he had played the unwonted part of escort in ordinary to two young women who had dragged him whither they would,—and whither he would not. Moreover, there was the look of the burden-bearer in his eyes, though their fire was undimmed; and an air of belated sprightliness in his manner which went near to Myra's heart, because she knew it came of conscious effort. These jottings and others, the added stoop of the shoulders, and the lagging half-step to the rear in entering, as of one who may no longer keep pace with younger men, Myra made while Dick was timing the dash for their train.
"Thirty-five minutes more, and we'll quit you,—say, Uncle Steve, that clock of yours is slow,—that's half an hour for supper, and five minutes for the yum-yums at the car-step. Gear yourselves, you two, and we'll all go and make a raid on the supper-room at the station."
"Indeed, we sha'n't," said Connie, in hospitable protest. "You are going to eat bread and butter and drink strong tea on the top floor of the Thorson Block. I've had the water cooking for an hour, and you sha'n't make me waste gasoline in any such way."
Dick would have argued the point with her; was, in fact, beginning the counter-protest, when Myra stopped him.'
"Of course we'll stay," she assented. "You go with Connie and help make the tea, Dick. I haven't begun to have a visit with Uncle Stephen yet."
Bartrow gave up the fight and was led captive of the small one to the room across the corridor which served as a kitchen. Left alone with his sister's daughter, Stephen Elliott had a sudden return of the haltingnesses which the Philadelphia niece, newly arrived, used to inspire; but Myra asked only for an acquiescent listener.
"Uncle Stephen," she began, pinning him in the lounge-corner from which there was no possibility of escape, "I've been wanting to get at you all day, and I was afraid you weren't going to give me a chance. You have 'grub-staked' a lot of people, first and last, haven't you?"
The old man eyed her suspiciously for a moment, and then evidently banished the suspicion as a thing unworthy.
"Why, yes; I have staked a good few of them, first and last, as you say."
"I knew it, and I wanted to ask a question. How much money did you usually give them?"
The suspicion was well lulled by this; and finding himself upon familiar ground, the pioneer went into details.
"That depended a good deal upon the other fellow. Some of them—most of 'em, I was going to say—couldn't be trusted with money at all, and I'd go buy them an outfit and stay with them till they got out o' range of the saloons and green tables."
"But when you found one whom you could trust, how much money did you give him? I'm not idly curious; I know a man who wants to go prospecting, and I have promised to 'stake' him."
The suspicion raised its head again, and was promptly clubbed into submission. Some one of the Myriad men wanted to try his luck, and he had "braced" the wife rather than the husband. So thought the pioneer, and made answer accordingly.
"I wouldn't monkey with it, if I were you, Myra; leastwise, not without letting Dick into it. He's right on the ground, and he'll tell you how much you'd ought to put up; or—what's more likely—if you oughtn't to tell the fellow to stick to his day-pay in the mine."
"Dick knows," said Myra, anticipating the exact truth by some brief hour or so, "and he's quite willing. But you know Dick; if I should leave it with him he would give the man all he had and go and borrow for himself. I want a good sober conservative opinion,—not too conservative, you know, but just about what you would need if you were going out yourself."
Elliott became dubitantly reflective, being divided between a desire to spare Myra's purse and a disposition born of fellow-feelings to make it as easy as might be for the unknown beneficiary.
"Oh, I don't know," he said, at length. "If the fellow is going by himself, he won't need much; but if he takes a partner it'll just about double the stake. Is he going to play it alone?"
Myra could see through the open door into the adjoining room, and she saw Connie bringing in the tea. Time was growing precious, if the conclusion were not to be tripped up by an interruption.
"I suppose he'll take a partner; they always do, don't they? Anyway, I want to make it enough so that he can if he chooses. Please tell me how much."
"Well, if he knows how to cut the corners and how to outfit so as to make the most of what he has, he'd ought to be able to do it on a couple of hundred or so. But I don't know if that ain't pretty liberal," he added, as if upon second thought.
Myra went quickly to the table under the lamp, and wrote upon a slip of paper. Elliott thought she was making a note of her information; and when she put the check into his hands he took it mechanically. But her hurried explanation drove the firing-pin of intelligence.
"It's for you—you are the man, Uncle Stephen; and if it isn't enough, it's your own fault." She said it with one eye on the two in the next room,and with nerves taut-braced for the shock of refusal. The shock came promptly.
"Oh—say—here! Myra, girl; I can't take this from you!" He was on his feet, trying to give back the check; and as she eluded him he followed her about the room, protesting as he went. "It's just like you to offer it, but I can't, don't you see? I'll rope somebody else in; somebody that knows the chances. Here, take it back,—I'm getting pretty old, and just as like as not I won't find anything worth assaying. Come, now; you be a good girl, and"—
He had driven her into a corner, and it was time for thecoup de main. So she put her arms about his neck and her face on his shoulder, and if the attack pathetic were no more than a clever bit of feigning, Stephen Elliott was none the wiser.
"I—I'd like to know what I have done!" she quavered. "You'd take it from a stranger—you said you would—and you've made me just the same as your own daughter, and now you wo—won't let me do the first little thing I've ever had a chance to do!"
There were more strong solvents of a similar nature in reserve, but they were not needed. The good old man was helplessly soluble in any woman's tears, real or invented; and his fine resolution melted and the bones of it became as water.
"There, there, little girl, don't you take on like that. I'll keep it. See? I've chucked it right down into the bottom of my pocket"—he wasstroking her hair and otherwise gentling her as if she were a hurt child. "Don't you fret a little bit. I'll spend it—every last cent of it—just the way you want me to. You mustn't cry another tear; Dick'll think I've been abusing you, and he'll fire the old uncle out of one of these high windows. Haven't you got any handkerchief?"
Connie and Dick were at the door, announcing the bread and butter and tea, and Myra's handkerchief became a convenient mask for the moment. A less simple-hearted man than the old pioneer might have suspected the sincerity of such tears as may be wiped away at a word, leaving no trace behind them; but Elliott was too child-like to know aught of the fine art of dissimulation, and he took Myra's sudden return to cheerfulness as a tribute to his own astuteness in yielding a point at the critical moment.
At the tea-table they were all more or less hilarious, each having somewhat to conceal from the others; and even Bartrow was made to feel the thinness of the ice upon which the trivialities were skating. Much to Connie's surprise, the tactless one developed unsuspected resources of adroitness in keeping the table-talk at concert-pitch of levity; and she forgave him when he was brutal enough to make a jest of the simple meal, giving the bread and butter a new name with each asking, and accusing her of being in league with the commissary department of the sleeping-car company. It spoke volumes for Dick's growth in perspicacity that hewas able to discern the keen edge of the crisis without having actually seen the stone upon which it had been whetted; and in the midst of her own fencings with the tensities, Constance found time to wonder how Myra had wrought even the beginning of such a miracle in the downright one.
In such resolute ignorings of the moving realities the supper interval was safely outworn; but when, at the end of it, Dick dragged out his watch and called "time," Constance found her tea too hot, and the drinking of it brought tears to her eyes. Whereupon the brutal one made an exaggerated pretense of sympathy, offering her a handkerchief; and the laugh saved them all until the good-bys were said, and the guests, with Elliott to speed their parting, had gone to the station.
Constance stood in the empty corridor until the farther stair ceased to echo their footsteps. The day-long strain was off at last, and she meant to go quickly and clear off the table and wash the supper dishes, to the end that the reaction might not overwhelm her. But on the way she stopped at the little square table in the larger room and took a letter from its hiding place at the back of a framed photograph. It was a double inclosure in an outside envelope which bore the business card of a well known legal firm; and the wrapping of the inner envelope was a note on the firm's letter-head, stating in terse phrase that the inclosed letter had been found under the door of an unoccupied house in Colfax Avenue by the writer in the early summerof the previous year; that it had been mislaid; and that it was now forwarded with many regrets for its unintentional suppression.
Constance read the note mechanically, as she had read it the day before when the postman had brought it. It explained nothing more than the mere fact of delay, but she understood. The writer of the lost letter, or his messenger, had thrust it under the door of the wrong house.
She laid the note aside and tilted the envelope to let a coin fall into her palm. It was a double-eagle piece, little worn, but the memories which clustered about its giving and taking seemed to dull the lustre of the yellow metal. It was the price of sorrowful humiliation, no whit less to the man who had taken than to the woman who had given it. She put it that way in an inflexible determination to be just. Truly, his acceptance of it was a thing to be remembered with cheek-burnings of shame; but she would not hold herself blameless. In the light of that which his letter disclosed, her charitable impulse became a sword to slay the last remnant of manly pride and self-respect—if any remnant there were.
She opened the letter and re-read it to the end, going back from the scarcely legible signature to a paragraph in the midst of it that bade fair to grave itself ineffaceably upon her heart.
"You may remember that I said I couldn't tell you the truth, because it concerns a woman. When I add that the woman is yourself, you will understand.I love you; I think I have been loving you ever since that evening which you said we were to forget—the evening at the theatre. Strangely enough, my love for you isn't strong in the strength which saves. I went from you that night when you had bidden me God-speed at Mrs. Calmaine's, and within the hour I was once more a penniless vagabond.
"When you were trying to help me this afternoon, I was trying to keep from saying that which I could never have a right to say. You pressed me very hard in your sweet innocence"....
She sat down and the letter slipped from her fingers. The hurt was a year in the past, but time had not yet dulled the pain of it. Not to any human soul, nor yet to her own heart, had she admitted the one living fact which stood unshaken; which would stand, like some polished corner-stone of a ruined temple, when all else should have crumbled into dust. For which cause she sat with clasped hands and eyes that saw not; eyes that were still deep wells and clear, but brimming with the bitter waters of a fountain which flows only for those whose loss is irreparable. And while she wept, the sorrowful under-thought slipped into speech.
"He calls it love, but it couldn't have been that. He says it wasn't strong in the strength that saves; and love is always mighty to succor the weak-hearted. I would have believed in him—I did believe in him, only I didn't know how to help. But no one could help when he didn't believe inhimself; and now he is just drifting, with the cruel sword of opportunity loose in its scabbard, and all the unspeakable things dragging him whithersoever they will.... And he meant to end it all when he wrote this letter; I know he did. That would have been terrible; but it would have been braver than to go on to robbery, and unfaith, and—and now to this last pitiless iniquity. Oh, I can't let it go on to that!—not if I have to go and plead with him for the sake of that which he once thought was—love." She went down upon her knees with her face hidden in the chair-cushion, and the unconscious monologue became a passionate beseeching: "O God, help me to be strong and steadfast, that I may not fail when I come to stand between these two; for Thou knowest the secrets of the heart and all its weakness; and Thou knowest"—
TheBartrows, with Stephen Elliott to expedite their outsetting, caught their train with nothing to spare; and while the goggle-eyed switch-lamps were still flashing past the windows of the sleeping-car, Myra settled herself comfortably in her corner of the section and demanded the day's accounting.
Bartrow was rummaging in the hand-bag for his traveling-cap, and he looked up with a most transparent affectation of surprise.
"Hah? Wasn't I supposed to be chasing around all day trying to buy a rock-drill?"
Myra ignored the skilless parry and thrust home. "Don't tease," she said. "You did beautifully at the supper-table, and I am quite sure Connie didn't suspect. But I want to know what has happened."
Bartrow laughed good-naturedly. "Same old window-pane for you to look through, am I not? It's lucky for me that I'm a rattling good fellow, with nothing particular inside of me to be ashamed of." He was thumbing a collection of pocket-worn papers, and presently handed her a crisp bill of exchange for five hundred and forty-five dollars. "What do you think of that for one of the happenings!"
She read the figure of it and the date. "I don't understand," she said. "Where did you get it?"
"You wouldn't guess in a thousand years. It's the money I borrowed for Jeffard one fine morning last fall, with bank interest to date."
"Then you have seen him?"
"Saw him, felt of his hand, and went to luncheon with him."
"Dick! And you really had the courage to ask him for this?"
Bartrow's smile was a grimace. "Don't you sit there and tempt me to lie about it. You know what a fool I am with a debtor. Fortunately, I didn't have to ask; it came about as most things do in this world—click! buzz! boom! and your infernal machine has exploded. We cannoned against each other as I was going into the bank to get the money for the machinery man. After we'd said 'Hello,' and shook hands, Jeffard went in with me. On the way out the cashier stopped us. 'Mr. Jeffard,' says he, 'your personal account has a credit of five hundred dollars which doesn't appear in the deposits. If you'll let me have your book I'll enter it.' 'A credit?—of five hundred dollars? I don't understand,' says Jeffard. 'It's all right,' says the cashier. 'It came from the Carbonate City National, in Leadville. Didn't they notify you?' 'No,' says Jeffard; 'it must be a mistake. I had no credit in Leadville.' All this time the cashier was digging into his pigeonholes. 'You must have had,' says he. 'I can't put my hand on their letter, but as I recall it, they said the money was a remittance made by you sometime last year tocover a promissory note. When it reached them the note had matured and had been lifted. They have kept your money a good while, but they claim not to have known your address.'"
Myra was listening with something more than curiosity.
"What did Mr. Jeffard say?" she asked.
"He looked a good deal more than he said; and what he said was rather queer. When he had pulled me a little aside, he lit a cigar and offered me one, as cool as ice. 'Of course, you'll understand that this was all prearranged between Mr. Holburn and myself,' says he. 'It would be too great a tax upon your credulity to ask you to believe that it is merely a coincidence; that I really did send the money to the Leadville bank to lift that note months ago.' I said No, and meant it; and he went over to the exchange window and made out a check and bought that draft. But afterward I could have kicked him for making that suggestion. I couldn't break away from it to save my life, and it stuck to me straight through to the finish."
"But you went to luncheon with him afterward. Didn't he explain?"
"Not a word. I tried my level best to pull the thing out of the hole two or three times, but it was buried too deep for me. And somehow that idiotic sneer of his seemed to color everything he said. He seemed to take it for granted that I'd been setting him down all these months for a scalawag, andeverything I could say got twisted into a slap. We worried through the meal, and the cigars after it, in some sort of thankless fashion; but I wouldn't do it again for a farm."
Myra became reflectively thoughtful, and with the jarring of the car the bit of money paper fell to the floor. Dick recovered it, put it away, and waited patiently for her comment. When it came it was no more than a leading question.
"What do you make of it, Dick?"
"I don't know what to make of it. If I could break away from all the things I used to know about him, I should say he acts like a man who has done something to make him declare war upon himself, and—as a natural consequence—upon everybody else. He seems to be ready to fight at the drop of the hat, and that's a bad symptom."
"It is a symptom of a guilty conscience, isn't it?"
Bartrow did not answer at once. To speak by the fact was to admit that all his loyal upholdings of Jeffard had been spent upon an unworthy object, and he was reluctant in just proportion to his loyalty. But the fact was large—too large to be overleaped.
"It is a symptom, yes; and I'm beginning to be afraid it's a true one in Jeffard's case. I didn't find a soft spot in him anywhere till we came to speak of Lansdale."
"They are still friends?"
"Y—es, in a way; a sort of give-and-take way.Lansdale is cool and pretty well-calculated in his friendships as in everything else; and I imagine he forgathers with Jeffard without prejudice to his own private convictions in the Garvin affair. It's a bit odd, but Jeffard seems to have most of the remembrances on his side."
"The kindly ones, you mean?"
"Yes. I hadn't seen Lansdale yet, and I asked Jeffard how he was looking. He wagged his head, and there was a look in his eyes that I'd seen there more than once in the old days. 'Unless there is something to be done more than has been tried, it's only a question of weeks,' said he; and then he went back to something I had said that morning in Leadville just before he climbed the engine for the race to Aspen."
Myra's eyebrows arched a query, and he elucidated.
"Didn't I tell you? We had been talking about Connie, and I had hinted that she'd be willing to buy health for Lansdale at a price; and he"—
Myra cut in swiftly. "Has she told you that, Dick?"
"Hardly; but I've eyes, haven't I? Well, as I was saying, Jeffard went back to that, and asked if Lansdale's recovery still meant as much to Connie. I told him I thought it meant rather more than less; and then he went into his shell, and when he came out it was on the human side. Said he had money to burn now, and asked if there was anything anybody could do to give Lansdale a bettershow for his white alley. I told him what I'd do if I could break away from the Myriad."
"I remember; you said you would take him afield."
"Yes. Rig up a team and a camping outfit, and chase him out into the mountains. Make him live outdoors for a month or two, and belt him over the head if I ever caught him sharpening a lead pencil. He's grinding away with Kershaw nights and Sundays, and trying to write a novel between times. It's a clear case of work-to-death."
Myra nodded. "I think so; I have thought so all along. But he wouldn't go with Mr. Jeffard."
"That's what I thought, and what I told Jeffard when he hinted at the thing. But we were both off; and that brings me to the other happening. After we'd smoked over it—Jeffard and I—we went around and hunted up Lansdale's doctor. The medicine-man agreed with me that it was the only chance, but he didn't give us much encouragement. Said it was a forlorn hope, with the odds against Lansdale; that he'd die if he didn't go, and would probably die if he did. Jeffard had been in and out of his shell two or three times since the beginning of it, but he came out again at that and stayed out. Said he owed Lansdale, and that would be a good way to wipe out the account. I told him that wouldn't go; that if he wanted to do Lansdale a good turn, he'd have to do it on its merits. 'I sha'n't be such a fool as to tell Lansdale I'm trying to square up with him,' says he. 'You go and persuade him.'"
Myra's hand was on his knee. "You poor boy!" she said; "they always unload the thankless things on you, don't they? Did you try?"
"Sure. If I'd felt like hanging back, a sight of Lansdale would have done the business for me. It's awful, little woman. I've seen dead men, and men that were going to die, but never a dying one that wanted so hard to live. Of course, he kicked clear over the traces when I proposed it, though I lied like a whitehead, and tried to make him believe it was my scheme to help Jeffard get cured of his case of mental and moral 'jimmies.' When that failed, I dug right down to hard-pan. 'You want to live, don't you?' said I, and when he admitted it, I biffed him square on the point of the jaw. Says I, 'Then it's a question of your stiff-necked New England pride against your love for a little girl who would give her right hand to see you well and strong, is it? You're not as good a man as I thought you were.'"
Myra was moved to protest. "Oh, Dick! I do hope you haven't taken too much for granted! But go on; what did he say?"
"I thought he'd rise up and fall on me at first; but he didn't. He mumbled something about the 'precious balms of a friend breaking his head,' and said I was altogether mistaken; that Connie was only an angel of mercy, one of God's little ones, and a few other things of that sort."
"'Only'!" laughed Myra.
"Yes, 'only.' But I could see that my shoulder-blowhad knocked him out. He switched the talk to Jeffard, and pretty soon he was asking me if I really thought he could do any good in that quarter; or if my saying so was merely a lie cut out of whole cloth. I was soaked through by that time, and another plunge more or less didn't cut any figure, so I told him it wasn't a lie; that there was still hope for Jeffard if any one would lay hold of him and stick to him. 'What kind of hope, Dick?' says he. And I said, 'The only kind that counts; the kind that'll make him all through what he is in part.' He shook his head at that, and said, 'I don't know. That would mean repentance and restitution,—and the money's got its teeth into him now.' I'll have to admit that I was arguing dead against the probabilities, and I knew it; but I wouldn't let go."
Myra's smile was tempered with affectionate pride. "You never do let go. Did he finally listen to reason?"
"Yes, at the end of it. But if it were six for himself and Connie, it was a good half-dozen for Jeffard. 'I'll go, Dick,' said he. 'I'm afraid your assumptions are all good-hearted wishes, but I'll go. Perhaps, if it comes to the worst, God will give me a man for my leave-taking.' That was a new side of him, to me; the Puritan side, isn't it?"
"The human side," she amended. "It is merely crusted a little thicker in the Puritan family."
"But it's there, all the same. Out here, where the horizons and other things are pretty wide open,we're apt to say what we think, and pretty much all of it; but Lansdale and his kind think a good bit more and keep it to themselves. He's all right. I only wish his getting well were as sure as the goodness of him. Are you getting sleepy? Want your berth made down?"
"Presently." Myra was gazing out at the night-wall slipping past the car windows, and for her the thick blackness mirrored a picture of a sweet-faced young woman sitting on a denim-covered lounge, with her hands tight clasped over one knee and her eyes alight with a soft starglow of compassion. And because of the picture, she said: "I'm afraid you didn't take too much for granted, Dick; and I could almost wish it were otherwise. It is heart-breaking to think of it."
Dick went over to a seat beside her, and tried to put himself as nearly as possible at her point of view.
"Let's not try to cross their bridges for them beforehand, little woman," he said, with his lips at her ear. "Life is pretty middling full for all of us,—for us two, at any rate."
It was five minutes later, and the train had stopped for orders at the canyon gateway, when she turned to him to say: "What do you think about Mr. Jeffard now, Dick? Are we all mistaken? or is he the hardened cynic he seems to be?"
Bartrow did not reply on the spur of the moment, as was his custom. When he had reasoned it out, he said:—
"I think we ought to break away from the notionthat a man has got to be either all angel or all devil. Jeffard's a human man, like the rest of us. He's done some good things that I know of,—and one pretty bad one; and it's the bad one that is setting the pace for him just now. But, as I once said to Lansdale, I'm betting on the finish. One bad curve needn't spoil a whole railroad."
Myra's hand sought and found his under cover of her wrap. "You are loyalty itself, Dick, and I can't help loving you for it. But you say 'one bad one.' Have you forgotten the Irish girl?"
Dick set his jaw at that, and the big hand closed firmly over the small one.
"When I have to believe that of him, Myra, my faith in my kind will drop back more notches than one. That would make him all devil, don't you see?"
But her charity outran his. "No, Dick; I don't quite see it. It is just one more coil in the puzzle-tangle of good and evil that you spoke of. Connie knows it, and if she can find it in her heart to forgive him"—
There was reverent awe in Bartrow's rejoinder. "Do you mean to say she'd forgive him—that?"
The intermittent clatter and roar of the canyon climb had begun, and in one of the breathing spaces Myra made answer.
"She is one of God's little ones, as Mr. Lansdale said. I think she would forgive him even that." And in the next gap in the clamor, "Did you tell him about Garvin?"
Dick shook his head. "No, I didn't dare to. It's a hard thing to say, but I'm not sure he wouldn't prosecute Jim for the attempt to kill. There's no such vindictiveness in the world as that which dates back to benefits forgot. But I told Lansdale, and gave him leave to make use of it if the time should ever come when he could do it without jeopardizing Garvin."
At which Myra's charity stumbled and fell and ran no more.
"That time will never come, Dick. Mr. Jeffard has a double feud with Garvin,—he is Garvin's debtor for benefits forgot, as you say; and he has done Garvin an injury. I am glad you didn't tell him."
"She'sgone to her rest, at last, poor soul, and it's happy she'd be if it wasn't for the childer."
Constance had been waiting through the long hours of the afternoon for Margaret's return from Owen David's shanty on the North Side; waiting for the summons to the death-bed of the mother of Owen David's children. She had promised to go, wherefore her heart smote her and the ready tears welled up at Margaret's announcement.
"Oh, Margaret! Why didn't you come for me!"
"'Twas no use at all, Miss Constance; 'twas her last word she said to you this morning, when she asked you to try once more with Owen for the childer's sake. When you'd gone she turned her face to the wall, and we never knew when her soul went out."
"Was Owen there?"
"He was; and it's sober he was for the first time in many a day. He took it hard; them Welsh are flighty people, anyway."
"He ought to take it hard," said Constance, with as near an approach to vindictiveness as the heart of compassion would sanction. "Has everything been done?"
Margaret nodded. "The neighbors were thatkind; and it's poor hard-working people they are, too."
"I know," said Constance. She was making ready to go out, and she found her purse and counted its keepings. They were as scanty as her will to help was plenteous. Myra's check had been generous, but the askings were many, and there was no more than the sweet savor of it left. "I'm sure I don't know what Owen will do," she went on. "I suppose there isn't money enough to bury her."
Margaret had taken off her hat and jacket and she was suddenly impelled to go to work. The lounge-cover was awry, and in the straightening of it she said:—
"Don't you be worrying about that, now, Miss Constance. It was Owen himself that was giving me the money for the funeral when I was leaving."
"Owen? Where did he get it? He hasn't had a day's work for a month."
Margaret was smoothing the cover and shaking the pillows vigorously. "Sure, that's just what I was thinking" (slap, slap), "but I've his money in my pocket this blessed minute. So you just go and say a sweet word to the childer, Miss Constance, and don't you be worrying about anything."
Connie's hand was on the door-knob, but she turned with a sudden sinking of the heart, and a swift impulse that sent her across the room to Margaret's side.
"Margaret, you gave Owen that money before he gave it to you. Where did you get it?"
Margaret left off beating the pillows and slipped upon her knees to bury her face in one of them.
"I knew you'd be asking that," she sobbed, and then: "Haven't I been working honest every day since Christmas? And does it be taking all I earn to keep me, I'd like to know?"
Constance went down on her knees beside the girl, and what she said was to One who was merciful even to the Magdalenes. When she rose the pain of it was a little dulled, and she went back to the charitable necessities in a word.
"Is there any one to watch with her to-night, Margaret?"
The girl lifted a tear-stained face, and the passionate Irish eyes were swimming, and Constance turned away because her loving compassion was greater than her determination to be judicially severe.
"I'm one," Margaret answered; "and Mrs. Mulcahey'll come over when her man gets home."
"Very well. I'll go over and give the children their suppers and put them to bed. I'll stay till you come, and you can bring Tommie to take me home."
Constance went upon her mission heavy-hearted; and in the hovel across the river found comfort in the giving of comfort. The David children were all little ones, too young to fully realize their loss; and when they had been fed and hushed to sleep, and one of David's fellow workmen had taken the husband away for the night, Constance sat down inthe room with the dead to wait for Margaret. For a heart less pitiful or a soul less steadfast, the silence of the night and the solitary watch with the sheeted figure on the bed might have been unnerving; but in all her life Constance had never had to reckon with fear. Hence, when the door opened behind her without a preliminary knock, and a footstep crossed the threshold, she thought it was one of the neighbors and rose softly with her finger on her lip. But when she saw who it was, she started back and made as if she would retreat to the room where the children were.
"You!" she said. "Why are you here?"
"I beg your pardon." Jeffard said it deferentially, almost humbly. "I didn't expect to find you here; I was looking for—for the man, you know. What has become of him?"
The hesitant pause in the midst of the explanation opened the door for a swift suspicion,—a suspicion too horrible to be entertained, and yet too strong to be driven forth. There was righteous indignation in her eyes when she went close to him and said:—
"Can you stand here in the presence of that"—pointing to the sheeted figure on the bed—"and lie to me? You expected to meet Margaret Gannon here. You have made an appointment with her—an assignation in the house of the dead. Shame on you!"
It should have crushed him. It did for the moment. And when he rallied it was apparently in a spirit of the sheerest hardihood.
"You are right," he said; "I did expect to meet Margaret. With your permission, I'll go outside and wait for her."
She flashed between him and the door and put her back to it.
"Not until you have heard what I have to say, Mr. Jeffard. I've been wanting to say it ever since Tommie told me, but you have been very careful not to give me a chance. You know this girl's story, and what she has had to fight from day to day. Are you so lost to every sense of justice and mercy as to try to drag her back into sin and shame after all her pitiful strugglings?"
"It would seem so," Jeffard retorted, and his smile was harder than his words. "It is quite conceivable that you should believe it of the man who once took your charity and made a mock of it. May I go now?"
"Oh, no, not yet; not until you have promised me to spare and slay not, for this once. Think of it a moment; it is the price of a human soul! And it is such a little thing for you to concede."
The hard smile came and went again.
"Another man might say that Margaret has come to be very beautiful, Miss Elliott."
The indignation was gone out of her eyes, and her lips were trembling.
"Oh, how can you be so hard!" she faltered. "Will nothing move you?"
He met the beseeching with a steady gaze that might have been the outlooking of a spirit of calmsuperiority or the cold stare of a demon of ruthlessness. The mere suggestion of the alternative made her hot and cold by turns.
"I wonder that you have the courage to appeal to me," he said, at length. "Are you not afraid?"
"For Margaret's sake I am not afraid."
"You are very brave—and very loyal. Do you wonder that I was once moved to tell you that I loved you?"
"How can you speak of that here—and now!" she burst out. "Is there no measure of the hardness of your heart? Is it not enough that you should make me beg for that which I have a right to demand?"
He went apart from her at that to walk softly up and down in the narrow space between the bed and the wall,—to walk for leaden-winged minutes that seemed hours to Constance, waiting for his answer. At the final turn he lifted the sheet from the face of the dead woman and looked long and earnestly, as one who would let death speak where life was dumb and inarticulate. Constance watched him with her heart in a turmoil of doubt and fear. The doubt was of her own making, as the fear was of his. She had thought that this man was known to her, in his potentialities for good or evil, in his stumblings upon the brink of the abyss, and in his later plunge into the depths of wrongdoing; but now that she was brought face to face with him, her prefigurings took new shapes and she feared to look upon them. For the potentialities had suddenly become superhuman, andlove itself stood aghast at the possibilities. In the midst of it he stood before her again.
"What is it that you would have me do?" he asked.
The tone of it assured her that her battle was fought and won; but at the moment of victory she had not the strength to make terms with him.
"You know what you ought to do," she said, with eyes downcast.
"The 'oughts' are sometimes terribly hard, Miss Elliott. Haven't you found them so?"
"Sometimes." She was finding one of them sufficiently hard at that moment to compel the admission.
"But they are never impossible, you would say, and that is true also. You asked me a few moments ago if there was nothing that would move me, and I was tempted. But that is past. Will you suffer me to go now?"
She stood aside, but her hand was still on the latch of the door.
"You have not promised," she said.
"Pardon me; I was hoping you would spare me. The cup is of my own mixing, but the lees are bitter. Must I drain them?"
"I—I don't understand," she rejoined.
"Don't you? Consider it a moment. You have taken it for granted that I had it in my heart to do this thing, and, knowing what you do of me, the inference is just. But I have not admitted it, and I had hoped you would spare me the admission whicha promise would imply. Won't you leave me this poor shadow of refutation?"
She opened the door for him.
"Thank you; it is much more than I deserve. Since you do not ask it, you shall have the assurance,—the best I can give. I shall leave Denver in a day or two, and you may take your own measures for safeguarding Margaret in the interval. Perhaps it won't be as difficult as you may imagine. If I have read her aright you may ask large things of her loyalty and devotion to you."
The battle was over, and she had but to hold her peace to be quit of him. But having won her cause it was not in the loving heart of her to let him go unrecompensed.
"You are going away? Then we may not meet again. I gave you bitter words a few minutes ago, Mr. Jeffard, but I believed they were true. Won't you deny them—if you can?"
His foot was across the threshold, but he turned to smile down upon her.
"You are a true woman. You said I lied to you, and now you ask me to deny it, knowing well enough that the denial will afterward stand for another falsehood. I know what you think of me,—what you are bound to think of me; but isn't it conceivable that I would rather quench that fire than add fuel to it?"
"But you are going away," she insisted.
"And since we may never meet again, you crave the poor comfort of a denial. You shall have it forwhat it is worth. When you are inclined to think charitably of me, go back to first principles and remember that the worst of men have sometimes had promptings which were not altogether unworthy. Let the major accusation stand, if you choose; I did have an appointment here with Margaret Gannon. But when your faith in humankind needs heartening, conceive that for this once the tryst was one which any woman might have kept with me. Believe, if you care to, that my business here this evening was really with this poor fellow whose sins have found him out. Would you like to be able to believe that?"
For the first time since doubt and fear had gotten the better of indignation she was able to lift her eyes to his.
"I will believe it," she said gratefully.
He smiled again, and she was no longer afraid. Now that she came to think of it, she wondered if she had ever been really afraid of him.
"Your faith is very beautiful, Miss Elliott. I am glad to be able to give it something better than a bare suggestion to build on. Will you give this to Margaret when she comes?"
It was a folded paper, with a printed title and indorsement blanks on the back. She took it and glanced at the filing. It was the deed to a burial lot in the name of Owen David.
"Oh!" she said; and there was a world of contrition and self-reproach in the single word. "Can you ever forgive me, Mr. Jeffard?"
As once before, when Lansdale had proffered it, Jeffard pushed aside the cup of reinstatement.
"Don't take too much for granted. Remember, the indictment still stands. Margaret Gannon's tempter might have done this and still merit your detestation."
And at the word she was once more alone with the still figure on the bed.
Forwhat reason Constance, left alone in the house of the dead, went softly from the lighted room to kneel at the bedside of the sleeping children in the lean-to beyond—to kneel with her face in her hands and her heart swelling with emotions too great for any outlet save that of sorrowful beseechings,—let those adjudge who have passed in some crucial moment from loss to gain, and back to loss again. There was a pitiful heart cry in the prayer for help because she knew now that love, mighty and unreasoning, must be reckoned with in every future thought of this man; love heedless of consequences, clinging first to an imagined ideal, and now to the sorrowful wreck of that ideal; love lashed into being, it may be, by the very whip of shame, acknowledged only to be chained and dungeoned in the Castle of Despair, but alive and pleading, and promising yet to live and plead though hope were dead.
It was thus that Margaret found her an hour later; and in the darkness of the little room the true-hearted Irish girl knelt beside her saint, with her strong arms around the weeping one, and a sob of precious sympathy in the outpouring of words.
"There now—there now, Miss Constance! isit kneeling here and crying for these poor left ones that you are? Sure it's the Holy Virgin herself that'll be mothering them, and the likes of them. And Owen'll be doing his part, too. It's a changed man he is."
Constance shook her head. She was too sincere to let the lesser reason stand for the greater, even with Margaret.
"I do grieve for them, Margaret; but—but it isn't that."
"It isn't that, do you say? Then I know full well what it is, and it's the truth I'm going to tell you, Miss Constance, for all the promisings he made me give him. 'Tis Mr. Jeffard's money that's to go for the funeral, and it was him left it with me to give to Owen. He told me you'd not take it from him, and 'twas his own free gift. Ever since he came back he's been giving me money for the poor ones, and making me swear never to tell you; but it was for your sweet sake, Miss Connie, and not for mine. I'd want to die if you didn't believe that."
"Oh, Margaret! are you telling me the truth? I do so want to believe it!"
Margaret rose and drew her confessor to the half-open door; to the bedside of the sheeted one.
"A little while ago she was alive and talking to you, Miss Constance, and you believed her because you knew she was going fast. If I'd be like that, I'd tell you the same."
"I believe you, Margaret—I do believe you; and, oh, I'msothankful! It would break my heart to have you go back now!"
"Don't you be worrying for me. Didn't I say once that the devil might fly away with me, but I'd not live to leave him have the good of it? When that time comes, Miss Constance, it's another dead woman you'll be crying over. And now you'll go home and take your rest; the good old father is waiting on the doorstep for you."
Even with his daughter, Stephen Elliott was the most reticent of men; and on the little journey up the river front and across the viaduct he plodded along in silence beside her, waiting for her to speak if she had anything to say. Constance had a heart full to overflowing, but not of the things which lend themselves to speech with any father; and when she broke the silence it was in self-defense, and on the side of the commonplace.
"Have you decided yet where you will go?" she asked, knowing that the arrangements for the prospecting trip were all but completed.
"N—no, not exactly. Except that I never have gone with the rush, and I don't mean to this time. There's some pretty promising country around up back of Dick's mountain, and I've been thinking of that."
"I wish you would go into the Bonanza district," she said. "If I'm to stay with Dick and Myra, it will be a comfort to know that you are not very far away."
The old man plodded another square before he succeeded in casting his thought into words.
"I was wondering if that wasn't the reason whyI want to go there. I'm not letting on to anybody about it, but I'm getting sort of old and trembly, Connie; and you're about all I have left."
She slipped her arm an inch or two farther through his. "Must it be, poppa? Can't we get along without it? I'll be glad to live like the poorest of them, if we can only be together."
"I know; you're a good daughter to me, Connie, and you'd go into the hospital on Dr. Gordon's offer to-morrow, if I'd say the word. But I think the last strike I made rather spoiled me. I got sort of used to the flesh-pots, and I haven't got over feeling for my check-book yet. I guess I'll have to try it once more before we go on the county."
She would have said more had there been more to say. But her arguments had all been exhausted when the prospecting fever had set in, and she could only send him forth with words of heartening and a brave God-speed.
"I'm not going to put things in the way," she said; "but I'd go with you and help dig, if you'd let me. The next best thing will be to have you somewhere within reach, and I shall be comforted if you can manage to keep Topeka Mountain in sight. But you won't."
"Yes, I will, daughter; the string pulls about as hard at my end as it does at yours, and I'll tell you what I'll do. The gulches that I had in mind are all up at the head of Myriad Creek, and I'll ship the 'stake' to Dick, and make the Myriada sort of outfitting camp. How will that strike you?"
"That will be fine," she said; adding, in an upflash of the old gayety: "and when you've located your claim, Myra and I will come and turn the windlass for you."
They were climbing the stairs to the darkened suite on the third floor, and at the door Constance found a telegraph messenger trying to pin a non-delivery notice to the panel. She signed his blank by the hall light, and read the message while her father was unlocking the door and lighting the lamp.
"It is from Myra," she explained; "and it's good news and bad. Do you remember what Dick was telling us the other evening about his drunken blacksmith?"
"The fellow that went into the blast-choke after the dead man?"
"Yes. He is down with mountain fever, and Myra says nothing but good nursing will save him. Dick has got his story out of him at last; he is Margaret Gannon's father."
"Humph! what a little world this is! I suppose you will send Margaret right away?"
"I shall go with her to-morrow morning. I'll tell Dick what you are going to do, and you can come when you are ready."
The old man nodded acquiescence. "It'll be better for you to go along; she'll be all broke up. Want me to go and wire Dick?"
"If you will. I should have asked the boy to wait, but he was gone before I had opened the envelope. Tell Dick to keep him alive at any cost, and that we'll be there to-morrow evening."
When her father was gone, Constance sat down to piece out the discoveries, comforting and harrowing, of the foregone hour, and to set them over against each other in a field which was as yet too near to be retrospective. She tried to stand aside for herself, and to see and consider only those to whom her heart went out in loving compassion and sympathy; but it was inevitable that she should finally come to a re-reading of the letter taken from its hiding-place in the photograph frame. She dwelt upon it with a soft flush spreading slowly from neck to cheek, reading it twice and yet once again before she laid it in the little wall-pocket of a grate and touched a match to it.
"For his sake and for mine," she said softly, as she watched it shrivel and blacken in the flame. "That is what I must do—burn my ships so that I can't go back."
The charred wraith of the letter went up the chimney in the expiring gasp of the flame, and there was the sound of a familiar step in the corridor. She went quickly to open the door for the late visitor. It was Lansdale, come to say what must be said on the eve of parting, and to ask for his answer to a conditional plea made in a moment when the consumptive's optimism had carried him off his feet.