It was not until the convention had adjourned for an hour's recess that Harry could escape from the congratulations that poured upon him where he sat. While he spoke, the sense of mastery and domination had possessed him; now he was feeling the inevitable revulsion, and with it came the fading of his confidence and the relifting of the old sickening question.
It had surged back before the applause had died away, the moment he had released his mind from the clamping resolution of his purpose, springing upon him like a cunning enemy who had dogged him in the shadow. His roseate speculations of the Bungalow seemed now but hollow wraiths that had mocked him with an unrealisable promise. Could he ever for a moment have cheated himself into forgetfulness of theimpassethat lay there?
With Brent beside him, he pushed his way to the foyer. There the press was thickened and they were blocked in a corner by the stream of people pouring from the galleries, from which position Harry found himself nodding across to enthusiastic greetings of old acquaintances.
"Good heavens!" fumed Brent, impatiently. "We'll never get out at this rate. Let's try the other door." Harry turned with him, seeking a way through the diminishing crowd. Then, abruptly he stopped. Near at hand, her side-face turned toward him, was Echo. Her delicate colour was heightened by an unwonted flush and her eyes shone softly under the curling golden waves of her hair.
Gazing in a confusion that was almost panic, Harry felt, with a burning sense of helplessness and cowardice, the impossibility of his position. The sight of her was like a cooling stream to a famished wanderer in the desert. It called to him with a thousand voices, lifting before him every sweet reminder of vanished things. She had not yet seen him, and as the crowd swept her slowly closer, he felt to the full his own blindness and egregious self-assurance that had made this plunge into the old current seem possible. He watched her with a fascinated intensity. She was speaking to some one beside her, her glance wandering. It shifted, then was raised, as if by very attraction, to his face.
He saw recognition spring across it like a shaft of sunlight, as with a quick impulse she started forward—then her arm caught itself, as it were, half extended. He felt himself chill in every nerve, the air was breathless. Mechanically his hand touched hers.
"You have been gone a year," she said, in a low, uneven voice.
Harry's very thought seemed suspended. "Is it—so long?" he answered.
He scarcely knew what he said: the reply was a mere involuntary expression of habit, a conventional phrase to fill the moment's need. He could not know that the very repression with which he was holding himself against the quick thrill of her touch made the words lifeless and inconsequential.
To Echo, however, in the tremulous gladness that had filled her at the knowledge of his return, and the exaltation of the hour, the reply, deserved as at heart she felt it to be, was like a blow in the face. A startled paleness swept up her cheeks like a wave, blotting their hue and misting the clear April of her eyes. She turned half-away, toward her companion, and the next moment the eddying crowd had come between.
On the hurrying pavement Brent dropped his hand on Sevier's shoulder. "I'm not going to congratulate you," he said. "I'm going to congratulate the new party. I'm off to the sanctum to write my editorial while it's red hot. You'll come back for the other session, I suppose. They're liable to nominate to-night."
"No," replied Harry. "I must get away from the crowd somewhere."
Brent caught the lassitude of his tone. "Better walk yourself tired," he counselled, "and then turn in. You'll be all right to-morrow."
They clasped hands and parted.
For a time Sevier walked aimlessly, choosing the less frequented thoroughfares, alone at last to think. He had done his best. Whether or not it would accomplish what Brent had hoped, he had made the strongest effort of which he was capable. The meeting with Echo had shaken him by its very unexpectedness, and had shown him how bitterly hard was to be his struggle with himself. In that instant of their encounter he had realised his own weakness.
Through the long, fading afternoon he walked on and on, past the outskirts of the city, on into the peaceful willow-green quiet of the country, where paved streets gave place to meandering red roads and the air was sweet with the delicate fragrance of blossoming fruit-trees. He sat an hour on the violet-blurred grass above the silver-looping river where he had often fished as a boy. All his life he had loved that gold-tinted, dream-shadowed valley. But now the soft wild clamour of birds, the multifold perfume of the fields, the errant plum-petals swimming in the breeze, the long-armed trees reaching out over the darkling water, called to him in vain. He scarcely saw the far, blue, hill-brushed horizon unfurl its pageant cloud-clusters to hide the sun, where it hastened, in purple toga, to greet the soft-eyed night.
What Spartan career had he been planning for himself? He loved her, desired her, still. He realised it with a stab of self-contempt. And loving her, could he see her day by day, meet her, talk with her—cold and empty words meaning less than nothing—with his heart crying to hers: "Thus far but no further! Because I loved you once I wear a shameful brand on my forehead, but my arms may never enfold you, your lips never lie on my lips, your heart beat against mine!—Never, never, never!"—could flesh and blood be capable of this? Better to go, while there was yet time, somewhere, anywhere, so it be out of her world. Under the deep evening sky, a gulf of gold, he turned city-ward again, still painfully absorbed with his thoughts—a dark tangle of anguish and doubt and longing.
As he neared his house speeding urchins were crying newspaper extras, and more than once he heard his name in the shouted, dislocated phrases. His speech! The swan's-song of Harry Sevier!
He let himself into his apartment with his latch-key and wearily switched on the lights. He suddenly remembered that he had eaten nothing since noon and realised that he was wretchedly tired and spent. A pencilled note, with the superscription in Brent's jerky hand, lay on the table. He took it up and opened it.
Then suddenly he gave an inarticulate cry of amaze—of actual fright. He was staring at this message, written an hour before:
Anti-liquor plank adopted. You were nominated for Governor on the first ballot at eight o'clock.
To every man come portentous moments of decision so packed with fate that all that his after life may hold of pain or joy, seen with the clearer view of later knowledge, may well have hung upon the issue. Harry's one greatest moment of crisis had been when he stood in the doorway of Cameron Craig's house, with that midnight alarm pulsing about him—when he had chosen the course that meant safety for Echo at such bitter cost to himself. The moment when he confronted the blunt fact of his nomination was wellnigh as significant.
Such a possibility had never occurred to him. He saw himself now, first with bewilderment, then with passionate resentment, in a predicament as unprecedented as it was unescapable. He had not even had the option of declining the nomination. By now his name, as the new party's choice, was darting over the clicking wires to the remotest borders of the country. How could he accept it? He, who might at any hour, for all he knew, be faced with a charge from which (if, indeed, flight still lay open) he must flee ignominiously, like a thief in the night—which, in the eyes of the law, he was! Yet how evade the thing thus thrust upon him? After his speech, in which he had championed the new cause so ardently, could he throw ridicule upon the organisation, make its leaders—men whom he had known and respected all his life—laughing-stocks, throw doubt upon his own intentions, and make his action of to-day show forth before all as a flamboyant bid for popular applause, the gallery-appeal of a pitifulflâneurand attitudinarian, who had no mind to link himself with an inevitable defeat at the polls?
As Harry stood in the pleasant, lighted room, with Brent's pencilled note in his hand, a strange thought obtruded itself to grow slowly over his confused imaginings. Behind it all was there not the same wise Intention whose outlines he had thought he distinguished in his bitter prison experience? And was he, in faithless presumption, to deny that over-rule, and vanish cavalierly into some sluggish back-current of life? The same fate that had turned Paddy the Brick's pellet of lead the single hair's-breadth that had saved him, perhaps, from the scaffold, had rendered his enemy, at least for the present, incapable of harming him. And this part of his problem belonged to the present. Why had the cards so fallen, unless in that intricate Plan, it was meant that he should now give his hand to this work? He had trusted fate far—might he not trust it further? Though the party that had called him to carry its standard into the fight was destined to failure, it was working for the future, and some other campaign—long after the worst that could befall had come to him—would bring its principles success. He would have done his part!
So, for good or ill to himself, Harry made his momentous decision, and as if it had been a signal, at the same instant there came the quick, insistent ringing of the telephone on his desk.
The next few days were days of ungrudging labour on Harry's part of conferences with the state leaders—for Brent's prophecy had been fulfilled and Good-Government Clubs throughout the state had placed their local machinery in the new party's control. These earlier meetings were, for the most part, in Harry's own apartment, or in the library of Midfields, since Judge Allen was chairman of the Committee on Organisation. On none of these latter occasions had he seen Echo, nor, to his relief, had he met her elsewhere. He gave himself no relaxation, bending all the energies of his reawakened being to the task of detail, and the mapping out of the campaign which he was entering. Whatever his apprehension and trepidation, he had learned his real weight in the hour of his great speech and the sense of power, linked with extraordinary and tangible opportunity, thrilled and dominated him.
There came an evening, however, after a day of more than usual concentration, when he felt that he must relax. He had dined at the hotel with some of the party's out-of-town lieutenants, but excused himself early and chose to dismiss his motor and to walk home afoot, craving the lightness and gaiety of the jostling streets and gleaming windows.
Presently he found himself passing a theatre-front and remembered that Brent had pressed him to make one of a box-party there that same evening. At the time he had left the matter open, pleading the dinner engagement, but now it occurred to him suddenly that an hour of lights and music would be welcome. It was the intermission after the first act and men were flocking into the doors, chatting and laughing. The spirit of frivolity attracted him and he entered with the rest.
The orchestra was playing—a Bohemian medley of uneven harmonies and wildly plaintive alternations, strung, as on a thread, on the airily-fantasticmotifof Dvorak'sHumoresque, and the pirouetting music seemed to belong to the flippant and shallow yet alluring interior, with its plenteous gold-leaf and dark blue draperies embroidered in peacock-feathers—the breath of a life of laughter, of careless amusement, of joy in the present. Harry felt his spirits lift and lighten at the grateful slackening of tension which themise en scenecreated, and he bowed and smiled easily when the audience testified its recognition, as he followed the attendant along the side wall, by a hushed hand-clapping which ran across the rows of seats.
With his hand parting the rear curtains of the box, however, he halted irresolutely—its occupants were Mrs. Spottiswoode, Brent, Lawrence Treadwell and Echo. For an instant resentment stirred in him; he guessed that Brent, albeit with the best intentions in the world, had planned this meeting. Then he squared his shoulders and entered. In another moment he had greeted Mrs. Spottiswoode and was bowing over Echo's hand.
The men had risen. "Here is the Candidate!" exclaimed Brent, laughing. "Mrs. Spottiswoode was just about to make me a wager that you wouldn't descend to such triviality."
Pretty Mrs. Spottiswoode smiled as she closed her fan. "If I had, I shouldn't begrudge the loss," she said. "You've missed the first act, Mr. Sevier, but then openings are always dull, aren't they?" Treadwell shook hands with him with frank friendliness. Politically he belonged to the party in power, but his liking for Harry was sincere and of long-standing.
The lights in the house were fading and the orchestra had swung into a soft and measured air. The rustle and chatter among the seats stilled: the curtain was rising. After the few words of greeting, Harry dropped into the vacant chair behind Echo's, in the rear of the enclosure. He had a feeling that again a satiric chance had snatched the reins of conduct from his hands. His unseeing gaze was set upon the crowded tiers beneath, but he was conscious of nothing but that small, delicately-shaped head like one in a Greek frieze, that clear-cut profile softly tinged by the dim rose-lamps of the box, the clasped, unringed hands, the lacy sweep of the pale evening-dress silhouetted against the curtain. Beyond the range of his vision manikins came and went upon the stage, speaking meaningless words. At the other side of the box Mrs. Spottiswoode was whispering some humorous adventure to Treadwell and Brent, whose heads were bent toward her. Everything else seemed unreal and far-away, and he and Echo the only realities in a chapter of banality.
He became conscious all at once that her head was turned toward him, and as though by magnetic compulsion his own eyes looked into hers.
"I want to say something to you." The words were the merest whisper on her parted lips, yet he heard. He drew his chair nearer till his bent head was at her shoulder. "Yes," he said.
Her lips trembled, but she spoke in a clear undertone, audible only to him, which faltered the merest trifle:
"I don't know whether—now—it makes any difference to you," she said. "But I—I was not myself when I—wrote you that note, the day you—went away. There was a reason why I—acted as I did. You—"
The low voice failed. There had been in the hesitant words failing pride and shame, mingled with the love that had been so long denied—a revelation which welled from the pure, outspoken honesty of heart that compelled it, demanding, at all odds, so far as he was concerned, openness and understanding. The shaken voice, the tremulous lips, the moon-soft fire of her eyes and the faint scent of her clothing, all the sweet suggestions of her presence were crying aloud to Harry, tempting him with a vision of promise. What if she had failed him—then? What if that courage he had dreamed, put to the touch, had shown but cowardice, that love of him a secondary thing to her? She was what he wanted—to yield himself to her arms as a swimmer to the sea! As much as she loved any one—save herself—she loved him! Was not a half loaf better than no bread? The icy barrier of reserve which he had reared crumbled down, and he felt the thing he had tried to imprison leap up, savage and not to be denied. His groping hand went out and touched her arm.
"Echo!" he whispered hoarsely. "Echo—"
His voice died in his throat. Her hands in her lap held the theatrical programme, and words in heavy black-letter—the title of the piece—were staring up at him from the white paper—
THE JAILBIRD
In the shadow, he felt his limbs suddenly trembling. With a kind of fascination his gaze, for the first time since his entrance, lifted to the stage.
It was set as a long flagged corridor of vertical steel bars, into which doors were let at regular intervals, and behind each door showed a bare, forbidding room, furnished with two iron cots, one above the other, and two wooden stools. As he gazed in consternation, a bell clangored and along the corridor came tramping a line of men clad in dingy stripes, pallid face close to shabby shoulder, one knee rising and falling to the damnable rhythm of the prison lock-step.
Harry felt an algid chill creep over him. He sat upright, his whole body rigid, each detail of the significant picture stamping itself upon his quivering perception. Midway of the line a turnkey unlocked a door in the barred wall and two links of the human chain detached themselves and entered—one stooped and crafty and cringing; the other clean-cut and erect with no stamp of vice upon his face. The clanging bolt shot home, the line moved off. Then, in the silence of the house the comely figure leaned against the bars, and John Stark's voice—or was it his, Harry Sevier's?—cried in broken agony:
"And I am innocent—innocent!"
As the curtain descended on the act, amid a crash of orchestral music, Mrs. Spottiswoode turned to Harry with a little shrug.
"Itismoving, really, isn't it? But howterriblyunnatural! Of course in real life nothing like that could happen to an innocent man. What do you think, Mr. Treadwell?"
But Treadwell did not answer at once. He had turned in surprise to the rear of the box, where a youth in a grey silver-buttoned uniform had parted the curtains. The messenger was looking at Brent, who rose and went to him.
"I beg pardon, sir," the boy said in a low voice, "but they told me at the box-office you were here. Will you please come over to the club? Something is the matter. Perhaps Mr. Sevier will come too."
Brent looked at him—there was agitation in the youthful face. He turned.
"Will you ladies excuse Sevier and me for a few minutes?" he said. "I dare say we shall be back before the curtain goes up again."
At the words Harry had risen also, with a quick relief at this summons, whatever it was, that offered the instant escape. Though his bow took in Echo, he did not look at her, as turning, he followed Brent quickly from the box.
Chisholm Allen had come to the end of a long tether. He was drunk. Not with the amiable jollity of the youthful tippler, nor with the heavy, fatuous oblivion of the sot, but with the drunkenness that marks the vicious rebellion of the nerve-cell against the prolonged excitation of an intoxicant—the dreadful revenge wherein the outraged brain summons the distorted imagination to fill the victim's landscape with uncouth and demoniacal visitants.
For a long fortnight, at the Springs, with a couple of cronies, he had defied convention and strained the tolerance, which had countenanced past escapades because he was an Allen, to the breaking-point. Only when revelry had sunken to deep debauch had friends been able to bring him to the city, where he had been bestowed in a room at the club to await returning soberness. That night, however, when the friendly guard had relaxed, Chilly had awakened to horrid visions. At first he had known them for creations of his drunken fantasy, but they had multiplied in numbers and horror till they had broken down the frail bulwark of remaining reason and obsessed him with the sense of reality—uncanny nightmares from some formless abysm, shuddering mistakes of nature, mingling in a monstrous extravaganza that crowded about to menace him.
With a scream Chilly burst from the room and ran along an upper corridor to the brightly-lighted reading-room. It was deserted at that hour—but not for him, for the visitants from which he fled pursued him there! They ringed him about, clutching at him. Livid and shaking, he seized a heavy iron poker from the hearth and crouching in a corner, beat off the imaginary assailants.
It was upon this spectacle that the agitated steward had come, called by a frightened bell-boy, and as the theatre stood opposite, he had hastily sent thither, as the likeliest spot in which to find somehabituéof the Club who might assume charge of the situation.
Two other club-members stood nonplussed and disconcerted on the threshold of the room when Harry Sevier and Brent entered, with the steward behind them. In the livid face of the boy at bay, the staring distempered eyes, the gripped, impromptu weapon, Harry read the fact. He spoke to him soothingly, but the frenzied brain did not recognise him. To Chilly's imagination the friendly, familiar faces took on the baleful character of the gibbering things by which he was beset. He sprang up, slashing frantically with the iron, panting indistinguishable words. Thus for a moment the writhing images fell back—only one of the iron lizards that formed the andirons suddenly came to life and on bat's-wings soared to a great marble bust that sat on a shelf above the fireplace, where it perched and spat down at him.
Chilly leaped up at it, dealing it blow after blow with the poker—then laughed wildly to see it suddenly waver and topple forward. So it seemed to him, but an exclamation of dismayed warning broke from Harry's lips; it was the heavy marble itself, its too frail support shattered by the attack, which was falling. He sprang forward.
But he reached the spot too late. The great bust came crashing from its height full upon Chilly's breast, and with a choked cry he went down beneath it.
The others rushed to him and between them the massive stone was lifted from the broken body. "Call up a doctor," Harry ordered the steward. "Get the nearest—tell him to hurry; Mr. Allen is badly hurt." To the rest he said, "Nothing must be known, as to how this happened, outside this room. It was an accident, remember, nothing more. The shelf was weak and the bust fell."
When the doctor came in, the crushed form lay upon a couch hastily improvised from chair-cushions. Blood was welling from the pale lips. He made a hasty examination, then looked up and shook his head.
"Better fetch his father and mother," he said, "and as quickly as possible."
"I will go," volunteered Brent. "My car is at the theatre. I can do it in twenty minutes." He went out quickly, while the man of medicine opened his case and busied himself with restoratives.
To Harry, who stood watching with the others, it seemed that these were to be of no avail, but after a sensible interval Chilly opened his eyes. He gazed at the professional face so near—at the other shocked countenances grouped about. He saw the bust lying on its side.
"I'm—sober now," he gasped. "I was—seeing things, eh? But I seem to be—hurt. What's the matter?"
"The marble fell and struck you," said Harry.
A spasm of pain caught Chilly and he groaned. "I remember," he said, and then, after a pause, "Am I—badly off?"
"I'm afraid so," said the doctor.
The pity in the tone conveyed its message. A tremor ran over Chilly's face. There was a long moment's silence.
"Have I—much time?"
"Not very much," answered the other gently.
Chilly caught a breath that was half a sob. "Poor little Nancy!" he whispered.
He looked up at the men who stood about him, "I would like—" he said, hesitatingly but clearly, "I would be glad if some—explanation might be made of this—occurrence—which would not involve unnecessary pain to the Duchess. Perhaps that is—impossible. But I would—be grateful—"
One of the younger men leaned beside him. It was Lee Carter, his closest friend, who had brought him that afternoon from the Springs. "Dear old chap!" he said, brokenly. "I was standing just under it. You saw it topple and jumped to save me! That is how it happened! Every one of us saw it."
A wan smile touched the whitening lips, "Gentlemen all!" said Chilly, and closed his eyes.
He lay silent then—he was breathing with increasing difficulty. At length there was the sound of a motor halting outside, and Harry and the rest went out.
In the quiet of the room the door opened upon Judge and Mrs. Allen. She was deadly pale, her face frozen with anguish. She knelt beside the prostrate figure and took the cold hand of her son in hers.
"Chilly!" she cried. "My poor, poor boy!"
His eyes opened. He seemed, in that last fading instant, to see only her. "Duchess!" he whispered, and with the word the light died in his face. "Duchess!"
Mrs. Allen looked at the Judge's quivering countenance with dull blank eyes, that saw two great tears suddenly detach themselves and roll down his pale cheeks. He took a step toward her.
"Charlotte—" he stammered. "Charlotte!"
There was in the shaking voice something that pierced her agony, a tone that she had not heard on his lips for many, many long years—an echo of accents that she had known when she was a bride. She gazed at him an instant voicelessly.
Then all at once her face broke up and a wild cry tore itself upward from her heart. It was not the voice now of cold and placid scorn, but that of the real woman—the eternal voice of Rachel weeping for her children. The sword of overwhelming tragedy had stripped off the protecting cicatrice of pride and arrogant resentment and bared the lonely soul beneath, that in this shuddering instant groped wildly for human comfort.
The Judge bent down and clasped her, and there, above the body of Chilly, for the first time since the son who lay dead before them had been born, she lay in her husband's arms, her face turned against his breast.
"If I only knew!" That was Echo's mental cry in the long days that followed Chilly's burial. "If I only knew whether Harry cared for me any longer!" Sharp as was her grief for her brother, this pang was the sharper, and it did not dull with time.
After the meeting in the corridor of the Convention Hall, when the barrier had risen, so icily cold, between them, she had been unable to blame him. The very depth of his hurt and resentment only showed her how much he had once cared, and she had longed fiercely for an opportunity of speech with him, which, it seemed to her, must set all right. This opportunity she had discerned in Brent's invitation to the theatre, since he had let fall that he had asked Harry also. She had known the character of the play to be presented and otherwise would have shrunk from the painful memories it must evoke, even though her personal dread had been exercised by the escape from prison of the convict from whose plight had come her own pain of conscience. But the possibility of Harry's presence had outweighed other considerations. In that moment in the box, when his lips had spoken her name, when she had felt his hand tremble against her arm, the ice had seemed about to melt in understanding. For an instant her heart had leaped up with glad certainty, only to drop to anguished slowness again at his sudden stricken silence.
"If I only knew!" Through the months of the early summer the question sat incarnate by Echo's side. By night and by day it never left her. She had no confidant, could have none. From this trouble her father himself was barred. It was some relief that she had no longer to wear a smiling motley, but could give her grief free rein, and there were times when she wept till the very fount of her tears seemed to be exhausted—when it seemed to her that all her life was darkened and her love lay stark with its death-tapers licking the gloom.
As time wore on, and her father threw himself again into the work of the political campaign, she was mentally more alone than ever. There were few of those old hours when she had been used to sit with him in the dusky library; for this room had become, gradually, the habitual meeting-place of the leaders, the clearing-house of county news, the forum in which were discussed and decided the varying policies of the struggle. Occasionally Harry took part in these gatherings—not often, for he was now away during long periods, speaking in various parts of the state. By the newspapers Echo followed his every step. He made no speech that she did not read with eagerness and pride. She knew that he was making a whirlwind campaign that had steadily increased in vigour and effect as the day of election drew nearer, and that, however the issues might fall, he was stamping his individuality deeply upon a wide community. She thrilled with the thought of his success, and in the unselfishness of her love, this was some recompense.
She found a kind of comfort, too, in the realisation that the relations of her father and mother had subtly altered. In her whole life she had never witnessed the smallest discourtesy of word or deed between them, yet there was now a positive element in their intercourse which she had never distinguished. Often now they sat together as the Judge wrote or scanned his reports, sometimes he discussed with his wife the phases of the political situation and once—with what Echo realised afterward was almost a guilty start—she had come upon them sitting in the lamplight hand in hand. She had turned away to discover that her eyes had unaccountably filled with tears.
Most of all that sustained her spirits in this period were her talks with Brent. Trained newspaperman and observer as he was, he had thrown himself into the battle with all ardour. Day after day, in trenchant editorials, he preached the Gospel of the new party, and many times he swung his long legs down the Avenue for a cup of tea at Midfields. His admiration for the fight Harry was making was immense and he found in Echo a perfect listener, sympathetic and comprehending.
And so the months passed till there remained but a fortnight before election day, and so deeply had Echo's imagination entered into the great issue, so intimately were all her thoughts engaged with Harry's tangible success, that even the dread of Craig's recovery, even the pain and puzzle of her heart, were thrust into the background.
That evening she sat at the piano in the drawing-room, her fingers wandering in long dreamyarpeggios, when her maid brought her a letter. It was from Nancy Eveland. She opened and read it through, to the postscript on the last page:
"The evening papers have a telegram from Buda-Pesth about Mr. Craig. He left the hospital there yesterday. The operation was completely successful."
She sat for some minutes with the paper held tight in her hand, with a weird feeling that it was a warning, and when she tried again to play her fingers stumbled into discord.
It was long before she slept that night, and then the fear swooped upon her in her dreaming. She thought it was her wedding-day and that she was pacing up a church aisle, over rose-leaves red as blood strewn with seed-pearls that had been her tears. Turned toward her were the faces of her father and mother, of Chilly and of a myriad friends, who filled every pew. At the altar Harry was standing waiting for her. But every countenance wore a look of astonishment and trepidation, and she knew that it was because the gown she was wearing was not white but black, and her bride's veil of black crêpe. This, however, had been necessary because she had wished that Craig would die, and the wish had somehow brought his death about. She thought she tried to explain this, in a whisper, to Harry, but he shrank from her. She turned to the rector, who had been ready, but as she looked at him, he took off his surplice and dashed it on the floor, and she saw that he was really Craig himself. Then the organ crashed and lights flared up about her and Harry vanished and all that was left was Craig's face, sneering at her, with a red blotch on his temple.
She awoke in the darkness with a start, trembling in every limb—to hear a lone hound howling from the stable.
Dr. Ivany, the great Hungarian specialist, adept in the delicate adventurings of brain surgery, ceased his examination and refastened the light bandage upon his patient's head with a look of satisfaction.
"But yes," he said, in his concise French, "it goes well. I release you from my care, Monsieur. One thing, however, you must remember. No excitation. No anger. No prolonged mental labour for some months to come. Otherwise—the tiniest hemorrhage in the affected area—and all my surgery could not undo the damage again."
The spruce young secretary who stood at Craig's side translated.
"All right," said Craig. "Tell him I'm much obliged." He shook hands with the great man without emotion, and when the door had closed upon the latter he got upon his feet. "Have you arranged the rooms at the hotel?"
"Yes, sir."
"Then get me out of here. The sooner the better."
A half hour later he was in a suite of the hotel. "Now bring me the home papers," he commanded.
"To-day, sir?" ventured the secretary. "Do you think you are strong enough so soon—"
"Do as I tell you," was the curt reply. "I was shot on the ninth of May, last year. I want to begin with the tenth, and I want all of them!"
The secretary went into the adjoining room, to return presently with a file of newspapers, stitched neatly together, their columns marked here and there in blue-pencil. He laid the great tome down on the table.
"That's all now," said Craig. "I'll call when I want you again. I'll dine here."
Alone, he drew a long breath. Then he set his teeth and a peculiar expression came to his face. A year, and more, had been snatched from his life—this had been told him when it had been evident that the operation had restored his faculties unimpaired, and as soon as he had recovered sufficient strength. Beyond this, however, he had been told nothing: on this score the surgical authority had been adamant. So, for weeks, denied even the presence of his secretary, he had been constrained, albeit impatiently, to subsist on the merest assurances cabled him from day to day that the interests which had been in his charge were adequately cared for, and to compel his stubborn resolution to patience. Now the embargo had been lifted; he was once more his own master. And before him, in black and white, lay the record of that vanished time, which to him was but a meaningless void thronged with vague and inchoate images, the story of the ignominy and downfall of the man who had tricked him and robbed him of the woman he desired! The blood rose in his temples. His lips drew up from his clenched teeth and his fingers twitched as he reached for the newspapers.
There it was, the episode that excluded all else from his thought, the sensational headlines running half across the front page—the story, pieced together by the assiduous reportorial pencil, of the burglars and the shooting, the unknown feminine visitor who had disappeared in the confusion leaving no clue behind her, the arrest of the single desperado, closing with the latter's confrontation with Craig himself. An exclamation of satisfaction fell from his lips. He had said to Echo that there lived no man who could say that he had lied—a boast that had had a shameful aftermath. Yet he felt now no shade of remorse for the black perjury that had fastened the attempted murder upon Harry Sevier. Rather he felt disappointed that consciousness had failed him a moment too soon, so that his own lips had not placarded the other to his face. That joy had been denied him.
He turned the leaves, searching avidly for the headlines which should have flung broadcast the startling identification. The events of the great world, the larger happenings that had plunged two Balkan States into war and overturned a British Ministry, the loss of a great ocean liner—even a senatorial inquiry into the methods of the Distillery Trust—held no interest for him at this moment. His brain had linked onto the past where it had dropped it, and the empty gulf had laid no cooling fingers on his burning craving for revenge.
But the thing he sought was not there. "Prisoner Refuses to Make Any Statement"—"Criminal Unknown to Police"—"Sticks Stubbornly to Policy of Silence"—as he read, a dull flush overspread his face. Fools! Was it possible that he—Harry Sevier—known to a thousand folk of a city a couple of hundreds of miles away, could hoodwink the police by the silly subterfuge of a newly-shaven chin? The papers shook in his vengeful clutch as he turned and turned, conning the progress of the trial. It ended with the conviction and the sentence; thereafter the headlines told of things of fresher public interest.
For a long time Craig sat perfectly still, staring into the grate whose fire-light danced in yellow shadows on the wall, with the page open on his knees. He had won the first trick, and Harry Sevier had played his lone trump of silence. But what of that? He was a jail-bird, chained to a cell for twenty years. His absence from home would long ago have raised a question, which in the end must become insistent. He, Cameron Craig, could answer that question! His lips curved in a cruel smile. And Echo? She had profited by the situation—Harry had borne the brunt.
Her lover! A sinistrous rage caught him as he repeated the word to himself. No softer thought of her now lurked in the bitter chambers of his mind. She had mocked and fooled him and he hated her with the still, cold hatred which the strong and evil man feels for the weaker thing that defies him. Yet so far as she was concerned he was helpless. He could not deny his declaration that he had not known the woman in the library. Life was long and he knew the penalty that in the south awaited the man who wantonly attacked the character of a woman. All facts aside, his sober judgment told him that the act would bar against him every social door that now stood open.
But Harry Sevier was another thing. Harry Sevier, thief and house-breaker? Harry Sevier, a midnight assassin? Harry Sevier, the nameless convict in the State's Penitentiary? What a story! Fate held its compensations, after all. Now he would be able to figure, first hand, in the sensation that he should send sweeping over the south like a lurid flame!
He rose and set the newspapers on the table, parting the leaves further along, now that his main craving had been satisfied catching glimpses of other things: movements in the business world, and the new political alignment, the danger of which, to the interests with which he was identified, he had long ago discerned. So the Civic Club following had become a full-fledged party now—was reaching out toward a state-wide organisation!
Suddenly his gaze fixed itself and he bent over the page staring unbelievingly. A hoarse ejaculation broke from him. What he saw was the line, in inch-high letters—
HENRY SEVIER FOR GOVERNOR!
He snatched up the file again and held it to the light. There was no mistake! Three months ago, while he had lain inert in the hospital above the river, the man he imagined the occupant of a prison-cell had been nominated for the highest office in the Commonwealth, the standard-bearer of the New Ideal!
For an instant a keen trepidation darted through him. His hand went up and touched the bandage. Could it be that he was—not himself? Was what he had imagined only the figment of a brain astray? With a fierce effort at self-control he sat down and beginning at the date at which he had left off his reading, began to scan the columns carefully and methodically, missing nothing.
For two hours he did this, and at length he came upon a paragraph at which his lowering face lightened with exultation. It chronicled in a dozen words the escape from the Penitentiary of the convict who was under imprisonment for the burglary of the Craig mansion and the shooting of its owner. The circle of evidence closed up. He was certain, now.
Craig laughed out loud, a grating laugh of sardonic amusement. Again the cards had fallen Harry Sevier's way. By some lucky chance he had freed himself, and with the effrontery of supposed security had resumed his old place and character, no one the wiser. Now he was actually running for Governor! Well, the higher the pinnacle the more spectacular the fall! The game was his, Craig's, for he held the highest trump!
He rang for his secretary.
"Bring me the steamer-lists," he said, "and have the servants pack my things. We are going to leave on the Nord-Express at midnight."
"So you think it incredible, then!"
Lawrence Treadwell's glance at Craig was veiled as he replied, dryly:
"I am considering the evidence as you present it, that's all. This, it seems to me, is what it amounts to: Mr. Henry Sevier, a reputable citizen and a well known resident of this place, a year ago leaves for a vacation."
"In disguise," interrupted Craig.
Treadwell shook his head. "There is no evidence of that—it is mere allegation. He was seen here late one afternoon, as usual. There could be no mistake, for he's a characteristic enough individual. He had arranged for the closing of his office, had told his clerk, in fact, that he was going abroad. The same night, at midnight in your own house—two hundred miles away and in another state—a man is arrested, one of a gang of burglars. There were all the usual earmarks—open safe, black mask, an attempt at escape, with the shooting of yourself thrown in."
"I identified him an hour later, as soon as I regained consciousness."
"As the man who had shot you—yes. Your identification went no further at that time. And since then you have been able to give no evidence."
"Until now," said Craig grimly.
"The burglar," pursued Treadwell, "is tried. He is unknown to the local police. He refuses to tell his name. Naturally! He has served time before and has no hankering for a life-sentence under the 'habitual-criminal' act. He is sentenced to twenty years. After a period of incarceration, he escapes, as jail-birds will, and is not apprehended. Some months afterward, Mr. Henry Sevier returns from his vacation and resumes his popular career. He is just now in the public eye—very much so, indeed. Do you seriously believe a claim that the two men are identical will hold water?"
Craig had been staring at him from under his shaggy brows. Anger was seething in his brain at the suspicion he felt was lurking behind the other's matter-of-fact logic. "Then you believe I am the victim of hallucination?" he asked, with forced calmness.
"Frankly," said Treadwell, "I think for you to allege such a thing openly would, at the very least, make you seem ridiculous. Man, don't you see? You've had a shock—a brain injury. You've been through a long period of mental illness, culminating in a major operation! Don't you realise—"
Craig struck his fist upon the table and his teeth snapped together. "Look here, Treadwell," he flamed, "I'm as sane as you are, and you know it!"
"Of course, of course," agreed the other, in a mollifying tone. "But why not let the matter rest awhile? Go down for a month to Old Point and build up—"
Craig's face turned livid. He got up, and lifted one clenched fist in the air.
"Think what you like!" he said, venomously. "Do you suppose I care what any one thinks? I'll show you whether I'm right or not!" His voice rose. "I'll drag him in the mud! Every man and woman in these two states—yes, and in a dozen more!—shall know him for a scoundrel and a robber! He dares to run for Governor, does he? The drunkenposeur! The damned hypocrite! He shall be jail-bird again and once for all, when I am through with him! He shall lie and rot with a chain and ball on his leg! He—"
He stopped. A needled stab of pain had darted, like a bee's sting, through his brow, beneath the bandage, and there flashed to him suddenly the warning of the surgeon, on the day he had left the hospital in Buda-Pesth: "...the tiniest hemorrhage in the affected area and all my surgery could not undo—"
He stood still an instant, breathing heavily. Then he caught up his hat and turned to the door.
Treadwell was looking at him curiously. The outburst had tended to reinforce the suspicion that had already come to him as to the other's mental condition. "What do you intend to do?" he asked.
"I am going to the Penitentiary, the physical record of the prisoner is there. I shall have it when I come back. I presume you would call that evidence?"
"The best—if the measurements proved identical with Sevier's. I daresay he would be willing to submit to the test," Treadwell added, thoughtfully. "—And then?"
"The election is day after to-morrow. I shall wait till the polls have closed, naturally, before I show him up. A convict, or one who has served a penal term, under the state constitution, can hold no office of public trust. I am advised that the new ticket is likely to win. The Trust's candidate will be next in the running, and with Sevier out, must be declared elected. Where will Sevier receive the returns?"
"At Midfields, I imagine," Treadwell replied. "It's the committee headquarters. Governor Eveland of your State is to be a guest there, I hear. He's very much interested in this campaign, being something of a reformer himself."
"So much the better! The Governor himself shall ask for the warrant for Sevier's arrest. We will go there that evening."
"We!" repeated Treadwell.
"Yes. You will come with me—as my attorney."
"But I don't approve the step!" protested the other. "I consider the whole affair preposterous!"
"I am under the impression," retorted Craig, darkly, "that you are still under my retainer—not Sevier's."
Treadwell flushed. "If you put it in that way," he said stiffly, "I shall of course accompany you. But you have my legal opinion."
Craig jerked the door open.
"I'll meet you at Midfields at eight that evening," he said.