The Wild Olive Part 32

The one thing clear to Miriam on the following day was that she had ruined everything with astonishing completeness--a curious result to come from what she was firmly convinced was "doing right." She had calculated that, by a moderate measure of suffering to Evie, and a large one to Ford, Evie's ultimate welfare at least would be secured. Now everything was being brought to grief together. Out of such a wreck nothing could be saved.

With Ford's desire to break the force which made him an impostor she had sympathy, but his willingness to risk his life in order to be in harmony with law and order again was not so easy for her to understand. While education, training and taste kept her, in her own person, within the restrictions of civilized life, yet the part of a free-lance in the world appealed to her strongly atavistic instincts far more directly than membership in a disciplined regular army. The guerilla fighter must of necessity be put to shifts--even moral shifts--which the common soldier, trained and commanded by others, can be spared; but her heart was with the man roving in the hills on his own account. That Ford should deliberately seek chains in barracks, when by her surrender on the subject of Evie she had made it possible for him still to keep the liberty of the field, was to her at once incomprehensible and awful. She had not only the sense of watching a man rushing upon Fate, but the knowledge that she herself had given him the impetus; while she was fully alive to the fact that when he fell everything she cared for in the world would fall with him.

Her mind was too resourceful, her spirit too energetic, to permit of her sitting in helpless anguish over his new determination. She was already busy with plans for counteracting him, in one of which at least she saw elements of hope. Having conceived its possibilities, she was eager to go and test them; but she had decided not to leave the house until she knew that Ford was really putting his plans into execution. The minute Evie learned the fatal news she would have need of her, and she dared not put herself out of the child's reach. Her first duty must be toward the fragile little creature, who would be crushed like a trampled flower.

Shortly before noon she was summoned to the telephone, where Evie was asking if she should find her in. Miriam judged from the tones of the transmitted voice that the worst had been made known. She was not, however, prepared for the briskness with which, ten minutes later, Evie whisked into the room, her cheeks aglow with excitement and her heavenly eyes dancing with a purely earthly sparkle.

"Isn't this awful?" she cried, before Miriam could take her into her loving arms. "Isn't it appalling? But it's not a surprise to me--not in the least. I knew there was something. Haven't I said so? I almost knew that his name wasn't Strange. If I hadn't been so busy with my coming out--and everything--I should have been sure of it. I haven't had time to think of it--do you see? With a lunch somewhere every day at half-past one," she hurried on, breathlessly, "and a tea at half-past four, and a dinner at eight, and a dance at eleven, and very likely the theatre or the opera in between--well, you can see I haven't been able to give much attention to anything else; but I knew, from the very time when I was in Buenos Aires, that there was something queer about that name. I never saw a man so sensitive when any one spoke about his name, not in all my life before--and you know down there it's the commonest thing--why, they're so suspicious on that point that they'd almost doubt that mine was Evie Colfax."

She threw her m.u.f.f in one direction, her boa in another, and her gloves in still another.

"But, Evie darling, you surely didn't think--"

"Of course I never thought of anything like this. I didn't really think of anything at all. If I'd begun to give my mind to it, I should probably have hit on something a great deal worse."

"What do you mean, dear? Worse--than what?"

"Worse than just being accused of shooting your uncle--and it was only his great-uncle, too. I might have thought of forgery or something dishonorable, though I should know he wasn't capable of it. Being accused isn't much. You can accuse _any one_--you could accuse _me_. That doesn't prove anything when he says he didn't do it. Of course he didn't do it.

Can't any one _see_? My goodness! I wish they'd let me make the laws. I'd show them. Just think! To put a man like that in prison--- and say they'd do such awful things to him--and make him change his name--and everything.

It's perfectly scandalous. It's an outrage. I shouldn't think such things would be allowed. They wouldn't be allowed in the Argentine. Why, there was a man out there who killed his father-in-law--actually _killed_ him--and they didn't do anything to him at all. I've seen him lots of times. Aunt Queenie has pointed him out to me. He used to have the box next but two to ours at the opera. And to think they should take a man like Herbert, and worry him like that--it makes me so indignant I'd like to--"

Evie ground her teeth, threw her clinched fists outward, and twitched her skirts about the room in the prettiest possible pa.s.sion of righteous anger.

"But, darling," Miriam asked, in a puzzled voice, "what are you going to do about it?"

Evie wheeled round haughtily.

"Do about it? What would you expect me to do about it? I'm going to tell every one he didn't do it--that's what I'm going to do about it. But of course we're not to speak of it just yet--outside ourselves, you know.

He's going to Buenos Aires to tell Uncle Jarrott he didn't do it--and when he comes back we're going to make it generally known. Oh, there's to be law about it--and everything. He means to change his name again to what it was before--Ford, the name was--and I must say, Miriam, I like that a good deal better than Strange, if you don't mind my telling you. It seems odd to have so many Stranges--and I must say I never could get used to the idea of having exactly the same name as yours. It was almost like not being married outside the family--and I should hate to marry a relation.

That part of it comes as a pleasant surprise, do you see? I'd made up my mind to Strange, and thought there was no way of getting rid of it, unless I--but I wasn't looking ahead to anything of _that_ kind. I hope I shall never--"

"So, darling, you're going to be true to him?"

"True to him? Of course I'm going to be true to him. Why shouldn't I be?

I'm going to be more true to him now than I was before. He's so n.o.ble about it, too. I wish you could have seen the way he broke it to me. Aunt Queenie said she never saw anything so affecting, not even on the stage.

She was there, you know. Herbert felt he couldn't go over it all twice, and he thought I should need some one to support me through the shock. I didn't--not a bit. But I wish you could have been there, just to see him."

"I can fancy it, dear."

"Of course I know now what you've been fidgeting about ever since he came to New York. He says you recognized him--that you'd seen him at Greenport.

Oh, I knew there was something. But I must say, Miriam, I think you might have told me confidentially, and not let it come on me as such a blow as this. Not that I take it as a blow, though, of course, it upsets things terribly. We can't announce our engagement for ever so long, and Aunt Queenie is rushing round in the motor now to take back what she wrote to a few people yesterday. I can't imagine what she'll tell them, because I charged her on her sacred honor not to give them the idea it was broken off, although I'd rather they thought it was broken off than that I hadn't been engaged at all."

"Miss Jarrott takes it quietly, then?"

"Quietly! I wish you could see her. She thinks there never was anything so romantic. Why, she cried over him, and kissed him, and said she'd always be his friend if every one else in the world were to turn against him. As a matter of fact, the poor old dear is head over heels in love with him--do you see?--in that sort of old-maid way--you know the kind of thing I mean. She thinks there's n.o.body like him, and neither there is. I shall miss him frightfully while he's down there telling Uncle Jarrott. I shall skip half my invitations and go regularly into retreat till he comes back. There's lots more he's going to tell me then--all about what Popsey Wayne had to do with it--and everything. I'm glad he doesn't want to do it now, because my head is reeling as it is. I've so many things to think of--and so much responsibility coming on me all at once--and--"

"Are you going to do anything about Billy?"

"Well, I can postpone that, at any rate. Thank goodness, there's _one_ silver lining to the cloud. I was going to give him a pretty strong hint to-night, seeing Aunt Queenie has begun writing notes around, but now I can let him simmer for a while longer. He won't be able to say I haven't let him down easy, poor old boy. And, Miriam dear," she continued, gathering up her various articles of apparel, preparatory to taking leave, "you'll keep just as quiet about it as you can, like a dear, won't you? We don't mean to say a word about it outside ourselves till Herbert comes back from seeing Uncle Jarrott. That's my advice--and it's all our advice--I mean, Aunt Queenie's, too. Then they're going to law--or something. I know you _won't_ say anything about it, but I thought I'd just put you on your guard."

If Evie's way of taking it was a new revelation to Miriam, of her own miscalculation, it was also a new incentive to setting to work as promptly as possible to repair what she could of the mischief she had made. With Evie's limitations she might never know more of the seriousness of her situation than a bird of the nature of the battle raging near its nest; while if even Ford "went to law," as Evie put it, and he came off victorious, there might still be chances for their happiness. To anything else Miriam was indifferent, as a man in the excitement of saving his children from fire or storm is dead to his own sensations. It was with impetuous, almost frenzied, eagerness, therefore, that she went to the telephone to ring up Charles Conquest, asking to be allowed to see him privately at his office during the afternoon.

In what she had made up her mind to do the fact that she was planning for herself an unnecessary measure of sacrifice was no deterrent. She was in a mood in which self-immolation seemed the natural penalty of her mistakes.

She was not without the knowledge that money could buy the help she purposed to obtain by direct intervention; but her inherited instincts, scornful of roundabout methods, urged her to pay the price in something more personal than coin. It replied in some degree to her self-accusation, it a.s.suaged the bitterness of her self-condemnation, to know that she was to be the active agent in putting right that which her errors of judgment had put wrong. To her essentially primitive soul atonement by proxy was as much out of the question as to the devotee beneath the wheels of Juggernaut. Somewhere in the background of her thought there were faint prudential protests against throwing herself away; but she disdained them, as a Latin or a Teuton disdains the Anglo-Saxon's preference for a court of law to the pistol of the duellist. It was something outside the realm of reason. Reckless impulses subdued by convent restraint or civilized requirements awoke with a start all the more violent because of their long sleep, driving her to do that which she knew other women would have done otherwise or not at all.

She was aware, therefore, of limitations in the sacrifice she was making; she was even aware that, in the true sense, it was no sacrifice whatever.

She was offering herself up because she chose to--in a kind of wilfulness--but a pa.s.sionate wilfulness which claimed that for her at least there was no other way. Other women, wiser women, women behind whom there was a long, moderation-loving past, might obey the laws that prompt to the economy of one's self; she could only follow those blind urgings which drove her forefathers to fight when they might have remained at peace, or whipped them forth into the wild places of the earth when they could have stayed in quiet homes. The hard way in preference to the easy way was in her blood. She could no more have resisted taking it now than she could have held herself back eight years ago from befriending Norrie Ford against the law.

Nevertheless, it was a support to her to remember that Conquest's manner on the occasions when business brought her to his office was always a little different from that which he a.s.sumed when they met outside. He was much more the professional man with his client, a little the friend, but not at all the lover--if he was a lover anywhere. Having welcomed her now with just the right shade of cordiality, he made her sit at a little distance from his desk, while he himself returned to the revolving-chair at which he had been writing when she entered. After the preliminary greetings, he put on, unconsciously, the questioning air a business man takes at the beginning of an interview which he has been invited to accord.

"I came--about Evie."

Now that she was there it was less easy to begin than she had expected.

"Quite so. I knew there was a hitch. I've just had a mysterious note from Queenie Jarrott which I haven't been able to make out. Can't they hit it off?"

"It's a good deal more serious than that. Mr. Strange came to see Mr.

Wayne and me last night. I may as well tell you as simply as I can. His name isn't Strange at all."

"Ho! ho! What's up?"

"Did you ever hear the name of--Norrie Ford?"

"Good Lord, yes! I can't quite remember--Let's see. Norrie Ford? I know the name as well as I know my own. Wasn't that the case--why, yes, it must have been--wasn't that the case Wayne was mixed up in six or eight years ago?"

"Yes, it was."

"The fellow gave 'em all the slip, didn't he?"

She nodded.

"Hadn't he been commuted to a life sentence--?"

"Mr. Wayne hoped it would be done, but it hadn't been done yet. He was still under sentence of--death."

"Yes, yes, yes. It comes back to me. We thought Wayne hadn't displayed much energy or ability of foresight--or something. I remember there was talk about it, and in the newspapers there was even a c.o.c.k-and-bull story that Wayne had connived at his escape. Well, what has that got to do with Evie?"

"It has everything to do with her."

Conquest's little gray-green eyes blinked as if against the blaze of their own light, while his features sharpened to their utmost incisiveness.

"You don't mean to say--?"

"I do."

"Well, upon--my--!" The exclamation trailed off into a silent effort to take in this extraordinary piece of intelligence "Do you mean to say the scamp had the cheek--? Oh no, it isn't possible. Come now!"