The Wild Olive Part 35

"That isn't the question--"

"No, but it's _a_ question. I presume you don't mind my asking it?"

"You may ask me anything, darling--of course. But this is your uncle Jarrott's affair, and yours. It wouldn't do for me--"

"Oh, that's so like you Miriam. You'd exasperate a saint--the way you won't give your opinion when you've got one. I wish I could ask Billy.

He'd know. But of course I couldn't, when he thinks I'm still engaged to _him_."

"What do you want to ask him, Evie, dear?"

"Well, he's a lawyer. He could tell me all about what it's all about. I'm sure _I_ don't know. I didn't think it was anything--and yet here's Uncle Jarrott writing as if it was something awful. He's written to Aunt Queenie, too. Of course I must stand by Herbert, whatever happens--if it isn't very bad; but you can see yourself that I don't want to be mixed up in a--a--in a scandal."

"It would hardly be a scandal, dear; but there would be some--some publicity about it."

"I don't mind publicity. I'm used to that, with my name in the paper every other day. It was in this morning. Did you see it?--the Gresley's dance.

Only I do wish they would call me Evelyn, and not Evie. It sounds so familiar."

"I'm afraid they'd put more in about you than just that."

"Would they? What?" Her eyes danced already, in antic.i.p.ation.

"I can't tell you exactly what; but it would be things you wouldn't like."

Evie twitched about the room, making little clicking sounds with her lips, as signs of meditation.

"Well, I mean to be true to him--a while longer," she said, at last, as if coming to a conclusion. "I'm not going to let Uncle Jarrott think I'm just a puppet to be jerked on a string. The idea! When he was as pleased as Punch about it himself. And Aunt Helen said she'd give me my trousseau. I suppose I sha'n't get that now. But there's the money you offered me for the pearl necklace. Only I'd much rather have the pearl--Well, I'll be true to him, do you see? We're leaving for Newport the day after to-morrow. They say there hasn't been such a brilliant summer for a long time as they expect this year. Thank goodness, there's something to take my mind off all this care and worry and responsiblity, otherwise I think I should pa.s.s away. But I shall show Uncle Jarrott that he can't do just as he likes with me, anyhow."

Evie and Miss Jarrott went to Newport, and it was the beginning of July before Miriam heard from Ford again. Once more she read to Conquest such portions of the letter as she thought he would find of interest.

"It is all over now," Ford wrote, "between Stephens and Jarrott and me.

I'm out of the concern for good. It was something of a wrench, and I'm glad it is past. I didn't see the old man again. I wanted to thank him and say good-bye, but he dodged me. Perhaps it is just as well. Even if I were to meet him now, I shouldn't make the attempt again. I confess to feeling a little hurt, but I thoroughly understand him. He is one of those men--you meet them now and again--survivals from the old school--with a sense of rect.i.tude so exact that they can only see in a straight line. It is all right. Don't think that I complain. It is almost as much for his sake as for my own that I wish he could have taken what I call a more comprehensive view of me. I know he suffers--and I shall never be able to tell him how sorry I am till we get into the kingdom of heaven. In fact, I can't explain anything to any one, except you, which must be an excuse for my long letters. I try to keep you posted in what I'm going through, so that you may convey as much or as little of it as you think fit to Evie. I can't tell her much, and I see from the little notes she writes me that she doesn't yet understand.

"The cat seems to be quite out of the bag in the office, though I haven't said a word to any one, and I know Mr. Jarrott wouldn't. Pride and sore feeling will keep him from ever speaking of me again, except when he can't help it. I don't mean to say that the men know exactly what it is, but they know enough to set them guessing. They are jolly nice about it, too, even the fellows who were hardly decent to me in the old days. Little Green--the chap from Boston who succeeded me at Rosario; I must have told you about him--and his wife can't do enough for me, and I know they mean it."

There was a silence of some weeks before he wrote again.

"I shall not get away from here as soon as I expected, as my private affairs are not easily settled up. This city grows so fast that I have had a good part of my savings in real estate. I am getting rid of it by degrees, but it takes time to sell to advantage. I may say that I am doing very well, for which I am not sorry, as I shall need the money for my trial. I hope you don't mind my referring to it, because I look forward to it with something you might almost call glee. To get back where I started will be like waking from a bad dream. I can't believe that Justice will make the same mistake twice--and even if she does I would rather she had the chance. I am much encouraged by the last reports from Kilcup and Warren. I've long felt that it was Jacob Gramm who did for my poor uncle, though I didn't like to accuse him of it when the proofs seemed all the other way. He certainly had more reason to do the trick than I had, for my uncle had been a brute to him for thirty years, while he had only worried me for two. He wasn't half a bad old chap, either--old Gramm--and it was one of the mysteries of the place to me that he could have stood it so long. The only explanation I could find was that he had a kind of affection for the old man, such as a dog will sometimes have for a master who beats him, or a woman for a drunken husband. I believe the moment came when he simply found himself at the end of his tether of endurance--and he just did for him. His grief, when it was all over, was real enough.

n.o.body could doubt that. In fact, it was so evidently genuine that the theory I am putting forward now only came to me of late years. I think there is something in it, and I believe the further they go the more they will find to support it. Now that the old chap is dead I should have less scruple in following it up--especially if the old lady is gone too. She was a bit of a vixen, but the husband was a good old sort. I liked him."

Some weeks later he wrote:

"I wander about this place a good deal like a ghost in its old haunts.

Everything here is so temporary, so changing--much more so than in New York--that one's footprints are very quickly washed away. Outside the office almost no one remembers me. It is curious to think that I was once so happy here--and so hopeful. There was always a kind of h.e.l.l in my heart, but I kept it banked down, as we do the earth's internal fires, beneath a tolerably solid crust. Yesterday, finding myself at the Hipodromo, I stood for a while on the spot where I first saw Evie. It used to seem to me a bit of enchanted ground, but I feel now as if I ought to erect a gravestone there. Poor little Evie! How right you were about it all. It was madness on my part to think she could ever climb up my Calvary. My excuse is that I didn't imagine it was going to be so steep. I even hoped she would never see that there was a Calvary at all. Her notes are still pitifully ignorant of the real state of things.

"And speaking of gravestones, I went out the other day to the Recoleta Cemetery, and looked at the grave of my poor old friend, Monsieur Durand.

Everything neat, and in good order. It gives me a peculiar satisfaction to see that the decorum he loved reigns where he 'sleeps.' I never knew his secret--except that rumor put him down for an unfrocked priest.

"I doubt if I shall get away from here till the beginning of October; but when I do, everything will be in trim for what I sometimes think of as my resurrection."

These letters, and others like them, Miriam shared conscientiously with Conquest. It was part of the loyalty she had vowed to him in her heart that she should keep nothing from him, except what was sanctified and sealed forever, as her own private history. In the impulse to give her life as a ransom for Norrie Ford's she was eager to do it without reserves, or repinings, or backward looks--without even a wish that it had been possible to make any other use of it. If she was not entirely successful in the last feat, she was fairly equal to the rest, so that in allowing himself to be misled Conquest could scarcely be charged with fatuity. With his combined advantages, personal and otherwise, it was not astonis.h.i.+ng that a woman should be in love with him; and if that woman proved to be Miriam Strange, one could only say that the unexpected had happened, as it often does. If, in view of all the circ.u.mstances, he dressed better than ever, and gave his little dinners more frequently, while happiness toned down the sharpness of his handsome profile to a softer line, he had little in common with Malvolio.

And what he had began to drop away from him. Insensibly he came to see that the display of his legal knowledge, of his carefully chosen ties, of his splendid equipment in house, horses, and automobiles, had something of the major-domo's strut in parti-colored hose. The day came when he understood that the effort to charm her by the parade of these things was like the appeal to divine grace by means of grinding on a prayer-mill. It was a long step to take, both in thought and emotion, leading him to see love, marriage, women's hearts, and all kindred subjects, from a different point of view. Love in particular began to appear to him as more than the sum total of approbation bestowed on an object to be acquired. Though he was not prepared to give it a new definition, it was clear that the old one was no longer sufficient for his needs. The mere fact that this woman, whom he had vainly tempted with gifts--whom he was still hoping to capture by prowess--could come to him of her own accord, had a transforming effect on himself. If he ever got her--by purchase, conquest, or any other form of acquisition--he had expected to be proud; he had never dreamed of this curious happiness, that almost made him humble.

It was a new conception of life to think that there were things in it that might be given, but which could not be bought; as it was a new revelation of himself to perceive that there were treasures in his dry heart which had never before been drawn on. This discovery was made almost accidentally. He stumbled on it, as men have stumbled on Koh-i-noors and Cullinanes lying in the sand.

"What I really came to tell you," he said to her, on one occasion, as they strolled side by side in the Park, "is that I am going away to-morrow--to the West--to Omaha."

"Isn't that rather sudden?"

"Rather. I've thought for the last few days I might do it. The fact is, they've found Amalia Gramm."

She stopped with a sudden start of interrogation, moving on again at once.

It was a hot September evening, at the hour when twilight merges into night. They had left Wayne on a favorite seat, and having finished their own walk northward, were returning to pick him up and take him home. It was just dark enough for the thin crescent of the harvest moon to be pendulous above the city, while a rim of lighted windows in high facades framed the tree-tops The peace of the quiet path in which they rambled seemed the more sylvan because of the clang and rumble of the streets, as a room will appear more secluded and secure when there is a storm outside.

"They've found her living with some nieces out there," he went on to explain. "She appears to have been half over the world since old Gramm died--home to Germany--back to America--to Denver--to Chicago--to Milwaukee--to the Lord knows where--and now she has fetched up in Omaha.

She strikes me in the light of an unquiet spirit. It seems she has nephews and nieces all over the lot--and as she has the ten thousand dollars old Chris Ford left them--"

"Are they going to bring her here?"

"They can't--bedridden--paralyzed, or something. They've got to take her testimony on the spot. I want to be there when they do it. There are certain questions which it is most important to have asked. In a way, it is not my business; but I'm going to make it mine. I've mulled over the thing so long that I think I see the psychology of the whole drama."

"I can never thank you enough for the interest you've shown," she said, after a brief silence.

He gave his short, nervous laugh.

"Nor I you for giving me the chance to show it. That's where the kindness comes in. It's made a different world for me, and me a different man in it. If anybody had told me last winter that I should spend the whole summer in town working on a criminal case--"

"You shouldn't have done that. I wanted you to go away as usual."

"And leave you here?"

"I shouldn't have minded--as long as Mr. Wayne preferred to stay. It's so hard for him to get about, anywhere but in the place he's accustomed to.

New York in summer isn't as bad as people made me think."

"I too have found that true. To me it has been a very happy time. But perhaps my reasons were different from yours."

She reflected a minute before uttering her next words, but decided to say them.

"I fancy our reasons were the same."

The low voice, the simplicity of the sentence, the meanings in it and behind it, made him tremble. It was then, perhaps, that he began to see most clearly the true nature of love, both as given and received.

"I don't think they can be," he ventured, hoping to draw her on to say something more; but she did not respond.

After all, he reflected, as they continued their walk more or less in silence, too many words would only spoil the minute's bliss. There was, too, a pleasure in standing afar off to view the promised land almost equal to that of marching into it--especially when, as now, he was given to understand that its milk and honey were awaiting him.