The Burglar and the Blizzard Part 7

"It would have been more fortunate for you if you had been a little less so."

"Oh, I don't know about that, Holland. I might have starved to death years ago."

"I wish to G.o.d you had," said Geoffrey.

McVay shook his head faintly in deprecation of such violence, but otherwise preferred to pa.s.s the remark by, and they soon set to work heating soup and smoked beef. When all was ready and spread in the dining-room--this was McVay's suggestion; he said food was unappetising unless it were nicely served--Geoffrey said:

"Go and see if your sister is awake, and if she is," he added firmly, "I'll give you a few minutes alone with her, so that you can explain the situation fully."

McVay nodded and slipped into the library. Geoffrey shut the door behind him, and sat down on a bench in the hall from which he could command both doors.

If he entertained the doubts of her innocence which he continually told himself no sane man could help entertaining, he found himself strangely nervous. He felt as if he were waiting outside an operating room. He thought of her as he had seen her asleep, of the curve of her eye-lashes on her cheek, of her raising those lashes, awaking to be met with McVay's revelations. Even if she were guilty, Geoffrey found it in his heart to pity her waking to learn that her brother was a prisoner. How unfortunate, too, would be her own position,--the guest, if only for a few hours, of a man who was concerned only to lodge her brother in jail.

His heart gave a distinct thump when the library door opened and they came out together. His eyes turned to her face at once, and found it unperturbed. Didn't she care, or had she always known?

McVay caught his arm when she had pa.s.sed them by, and whispered glibly:

"Thought it was better to wait until she had had something to eat--shock on an empty stomach, so bad--so hard to bear."

Geoffrey shook his arm free. "You infernal coward," he whispered back.

"Well, I like that," retorted McVay, "you didn't tell her yourself when you had the chance."

"It wasn't my affair. I did not tell her because--"

"Oh, I know," McVay interrupted with a chuckle. "I've been knowing why for the last ten minutes."

They followed her into the dining-room.

It was not a sumptuous repast to which they sat down, but Geoffrey asked nothing better. He was sitting opposite to her,--a position evidently decreed him by Fate from the beginning of time. He could look at her, and now and then, in spite of her delicious reluctance, could force her to meet his eyes. When this happened, nothing was ever more apparent than that, for both of them, a momentous event had occurred.

She was almost completely silent, and as for him, his responses to the general conversation which McVay kept attempting to set up, were so entirely mechanical that he was scarcely aware of them himself.

It was she who suddenly remembered that it was Christmas day.

"And _this_ is our Christmas dinner," observed McVay regretfully.

"Oh, no," returned the girl, "this is luncheon. I'll cook your dinner.

You'll see."

There was a pause. Geoffrey looked at McVay. The moment for disillusioning her had manifestly come. Wherever they might next meet it would not be at his dinner table. A hateful vision of a criminal court rose before him.

"Miss McVay," he said gravely, indifferent to the signals of warning which the other man was directing toward him; "we shall not be here at dinner. Your brother will tell you my reasons for wis.h.i.+ng to start down the mountain."

"Now?"

"At once."

She coloured slowly and deeply,--the only evidence of anger. "I do not need any other reason than your wish that we should go," she said, rising. "I should thank you for having borne with us so long."

"Upon my word, Holland, it is madness to start as late as this," said McVay. "It will be dark in an hour."

She turned on her brother quickly: "Please say no more about the matter, Billy," she said. "We will start at once."

"You won't start if it means certainly freezing to death," he remonstrated.

She flashed a glance at Geoffrey, who had also risen and was trying to compel the truth from McVay by a stern, steady glance.

"I _would_," she answered and shut the door behind her.

McVay sprang up and was about to follow her when Geoffrey stopped him.

"One moment," he said, "you are quite right. It is too late to start to-night. We must stay here until to-morrow. But if we are to spend a night here without your sister's being told--"

"My dear Holland, think of her position, if we did tell her!"

"I grant that the information had better be withheld until just as we are starting, but in that case I must--"

"I know what you are going to ask,--my word of honour not to escape. I give it, I give it willingly."

"I'm not going to ask for anything at all," said Geoffrey. "I'm going to tell you one or two things, and I advise you to pay attention. We won't have any nonsense at all. Remember I am armed, and I am a quick man with a gun. There may be some quicker, but not in the East, and it wasn't in the East I got my training. You will always keep in front of me where I can see you plainly, and you will never, under any circ.u.mstances come nearer than six feet to me. If you should ever come nearer than that or take a sudden step in my direction, I'd shoot you just as sure as I stand here."

McVay looked distinctly crestfallen. "Oh, come, Holland," he said, "isn't that the least little bit exaggerated? You would not shoot me before my own sister?"

"I would not like to, but there are things I should dislike even more, and having you escape is one of them."

The other thought it over. "The trouble is," he explained, "that I am impulsive. You must have noticed it. I get carried away. You know how I am. I'm not at all sure that I shall remember."

"I advise you to try, for this is the only warning you will get."

"I cannot believe, Holland, that you would really shoot me in cold blood in the presence of my own sister."

"You had better behave as if you believed it."

"I don't like this arrangement," McVay broke out peevishly. "Suppose, for the sake of argument, that I did forget,--that I put my hand on your shoulder--a very natural gesture."

"I should shoot instantly."

"But fancy the shock to Cecilia."

"Not more of a shock, perhaps, than discovering that you are a thief.

And another thing, it may be very gay and amusing to be forever fooling about the subject, but I advise you against it. It does not amuse me."

"Oh, be honest, Holland, it does, it must amuse you. It is essentially amusing."

"It won't amuse her, or you either when she finds out that you are not only a thief but that you have been able to find amus.e.m.e.nt in deceiving her."

Again McVay's gaiety seemed momentarily dashed. "Very true," he said, "I had not thought of that. But then," he added more brightly, "who can tell if it will actually fall to my lot to tell her. Things happen so strangely. It may turn out that that is _your_ part."