CHAPTER XVIII
THE KISS ON THE HAND
"Did it ever occur to you," began Enid Maitland gravely enough, for shequite realized the serious nature of the impending conversation, "did itever occur to you that you know practically all about me, while I knowpractically nothing about you?"
The man bowed his head.
"You may have fancied that I was not aware of it, but in one way oranother you have possessed yourself of pretty nearly all of my shortand, until I met you, most uneventful life," she continued.
Newbold might have answered that there was one subject which had beencasually introduced by her upon one occasion and to which she had neveragain referred, but which was to him the most important of all subjectsconnected with her; and that was the nature of her relationship to oneJames Armstrong whose name, although he had heard it but once, he hadnot forgotten. The girl had been frankness itself in following his deftleads when he talked with her about herself, but she had shown the samereticence in recurring to Armstrong that he had displayed in questioningher about him. The statement she had just made as to his acquaintancewith her history was therefore sufficiently near the truth to passunchallenged and once again he gravely bowed in acquiescence.
"I have withheld nothing from you," went on the girl; "whatever youwanted to know, I have told you. I had nothing to conceal, as you havefound out. Why you wanted to know about me, I am not quite sure."
"It was because--" burst out the man impetuously, and then he stoppedabruptly and just in time.
Enid Maitland smiled at him in a way that indicated she knew what wasbehind the sudden check he had imposed upon himself.
"Whatever your reason, your curiosity--"
"Don't call it that, please."
"Your desire, then, has been gratified. Now it is my turn. I am not evensure about your name. I have seen it in these books and naturally I haveimagined that it is yours."
"It is mine."
"Well, that is really all that I know about you. And now I shall bequite frank. I want to know more. You evidently have something toconceal or you would not be living here in this way. I have never askedyou about yourself, or manifested the least curiosity to solve theproblem you present, to find the solution of the mystery of your life."
"Perhaps," said the man, "you didn't care enough about it to take thetrouble to inquire."
"You know," answered the girl, "that is not true. I have been consumedwith desire to know?"
"A woman's curiosity?"
"Not that," was the soft answer that turned away his wrath.
She was indeed frank. There was that in her way of uttering those twosimple words that set his pulses bounding. He was not altogether andabsolutely blind.
"Come," said the girl, extending her hand to him, "we are alone heretogether. We must help each other. You have helped me, you have been ofthe greatest service to me. I can't begin to count all that you havedone for me; my gratitude--"
"Only that?"
"But that is all that you have ever asked or expected," answered theyoung woman in a low voice, whose gentle tones did not at all accordwith the boldness and courage of the speech.
"You mean?" asked the man, staring at her, his face aflame.
"I mean," answered the girl swiftly, willfully misinterpreting andturning his half-spoken question another way, "I mean that I am surethat some trouble has brought you here. I do not wish to force yourconfidence--I have no right to do so--yet I should like to enjoy it.Can't you give it to me? I want to help you. I want to do my best tomake some return for what you have been to me and have done for me."
"I ask but one thing," he said quickly.
"And what is that?"
But again he checked himself.
"No," he said, "I am not free to ask anything of you."
And that answer to Enid Maitland was like a knife thrust in the heart.The two had been standing, confronting each other. Her heart grew faintwithin her. She stretched out her hand vaguely, as if for support. Hestepped toward her, but before he reached her she caught the back of thechair and sank down weakly. That he should be bound and not free, hadnever once occurred to her. She had quite misinterpreted the meaning ofhis remark.
The man did not help her; he could not help her. He just stood andlooked at her. She fought valiantly for self-control a moment or twoand then utterly oblivious to the betrayal of her feelings involved inthe question--the moments were too great for consideration of suchtrivial matters--she faltered:
"You mean there is some other woman?"
He shook his head in negation.
"I don't understand."
"There was some other woman?"
"Where is she now?"
"Dead."
"But you said you were not free."
He nodded.
"Did you care so much for her that now--that now--"
"Enid," he cried desperately. "Believe me, I never knew what love wasuntil I met you."
The secret was out now, it had been known to her long since, but now itwas publicly proclaimed. Even a man as blind, as obsessed, as he couldnot mistake the joy that illuminated her face at this announcement. Thatvery joy and satisfaction produced upon him, however, a very differenteffect than might have been anticipated. Had he been free indeed hewould have swept her to his breast and covered her sweet face withkisses broken by whispered words of passionate endearment. Instead ofthat he shrank back from her and it was she who was forced to take upthe burden of the conversation.
"You say that she is dead," she began in sweet appealing bewilderment,"and that you care so much for me and yet you--"
"I am a murderer," he broke out harshly. "There is blood upon my hands,the blood of a woman who loved me and whom, boy as I was, I thought thatI loved. She was my wife, I killed her."
"Great Heaven!" cried the girl, amazed beyond measure or expectation bythis sudden avowal which she had never once suspected, and her handinstinctively went to the bosom of her dress where she kept that soiled,water-stained packet of letters, "are you that man?"
"I am that man that did that thing, but what do you know?" he askedquickly, amazed in his turn.
"Old Kirkby, my uncle Robert Maitland, told me your story. They saidthat you had disappeared from the haunts of men--"
"And they were right. What else was there for me to do? Althoughinnocent of crime, I was blood guilty. I was mad. No punishment could bevisited upon me like that imposed by the stern, awful, appalling fact. Iswore to prison myself, to have nothing more forever to do with mankindor womankind with whom I was unworthy to associate, to live alone untilGod took me. To cherish my memories, to make such expiation as I could,to pray daily for forgiveness. I came here to the wildest, the mostinaccessible, the loneliest, spot in the range. No one ever would comehere I fancied, no one ever did come here but you. I was happy after afashion, or at least content. I had chosen the better part. I had work,I could read, write, remember and dream. But you came and since thattime life has been heaven and hell. Heaven because I love you, hellbecause to love you means disloyalty to the past, to a woman who lovedme. Heaven because you are here, I can hear your voice, I can see you,your soul is spread out before me in its sweetness, in its purity; hellbecause I am false to my determination, to my vow, to the love of thepast."
"And did you love her so much, then?" asked the girl, now fiercelyjealous and forgetful of other things for the moment.
"It's not that," said the man. "I was not much more than a boy, a yearor two out of college. I had been in the mountains a year. This womanlived in a mining camp, she was a fresh, clean, healthy girl, her fatherdied and the whole camp fathered her, looked after her, and all theyoung men in the range for miles on either side were in love with her.I supposed that I was, too, and--well, I won her from the others. We hadbeen married but a few months and a part of the time my business as amining engineer had called me away from her. I can remember the daybefore we started on the last journey. I was going alone again, but shewas so unhappy over my de
parture, she clung to me, pleaded with me,implored me to take her with me, insisted on going wherever I went,would not be left behind. She couldn't bear me out of her sight, itseemed. I don't know what there was in me to have inspired suchdevotion, but I must speak the truth, however it may sound. She seemedwild, crazy about me. I didn't understand it; frankly, I didn't knowwhat such love was--then--but I took her along. Shall I not be honestwith you? In spite of the attraction physical, I had begun to feel eventhen that she was not the mate for me. I don't deserve it, and it shamesme to say it of course, but I wanted a better mind, a higher soul. Thatmade it harder--what I had to do, you know."
"Yes, I know."
"The only thing I could do when I came to my senses was to sacrificemyself to her memory because she had loved me so; as it were, she gaveup her life for me, I could do no less than be true and loyal to theremembrance. It wasn't a sacrifice either until you came, but as soon asyou opened your eyes and looked into mine in the rain and the storm uponthe rock to which I had carried you after I had fought for you, I knewthat I loved you. I knew that the love that had come into my heart wasthe love of which I had dreamed, that everything that had gone beforewas nothing, that I had found the one woman whose soul should mate withmine."
"And this before I had said a word to you?"
"What are words? The heart speaks to the heart, the soul whispers to thesoul. And so it was with us. I had fought for you, you were mine, mine.My heart sang it as I panted and struggled over the rocks carrying you.It said the words again and again as I laid you down here in this cabin.It repeated them over and over; mine, mine! It says that every day andhour. And yet honor and fidelity bid me stay. I am free, yet bound; freeto love you, but not to take you. My heart says yes, my conscience no. Ishould despise myself if I were false to the love which my wife bore me,and how could I offer you a blood stained hand?"
He had drawn very near her while he spoke; she had risen again and thetwo confronted each other. He stretched out his hand as he asked thatlast question, almost as if he had offered it to her. She made the bestanswer possible to his demand, for before he could divine what she wouldbe at, she had seized his hand and kissed it, and this time it was theman whose knees gave way. He sank down in the chair and buried his facein his hands.
"Oh, God! Oh, God!" he cried in his humiliation and shame. "If I hadonly met you first, or if my wife had died as others die, and not by myhand in that awful hour. I can see her now, broken, bruised, bleeding,torn. I can hear the report of that weapon. Her last glance at me in themidst of her indescribable agony was one of thankfulness and gratitude.I can't stand it, I am unworthy even of her."
"But you could not help it, it was not your fault. And you can'thelp--caring--for me--"
"I ought to help it, I ought not love you, I ought to have known that Iwas not fit to love any woman, that I had no right, that I was pledgedlike a monk to the past. I have been weak, a fool. I love you and myhonor goes, I love you and my self respect goes, I love you and my pridegoes. Would God I could say I love you and my life goes and end it all."He stared at her a little space. "There is only one ray of satisfactionin it at all, one gleam of comfort," he added.
"And what is that?"
"You don't know what the suffering is, you don't understand, you don'tcomprehend."
"And why not?"
"Because you do not love me."
"But I do," said the woman quite simply, as if it were a matter ofcourse not only that she should love him, but that she should also tellhim so.
The man stared at her, amazed. Such fierce surges of joy throbbedthrough him as he had not thought the human frame could sustain. Thiswoman loved him, in some strange way he had gained her affection. It wasimpossible, yet she had said so! He had been a blind fool. He could seethat now. She stood before him and smiled up at him, looking at himthrough eyes misted with tears, with lips parted, with color coming andgoing in her cheek and with her bosom rising and falling. She loved him,he had but to step nearer to her to take her in his arms. There wastrust, devotion, surrender, everything, in her attitude and betweenthem, like that great gulf which lay between the rich man and thebeggar, that separated heaven and hell, was that he could not cross.
"I never dreamed, I never hoped--oh," he exclaimed as if he had got hisdeath wound, "this cannot be borne."
He turned away, but in two swift steps she caught him.
"Where do you go?"
"Out, out into the night."
"You cannot go now, it is dark; hark to the storm, you will miss yourfooting; you would fall, you would freeze, you would die."
"What matters that?"
"I cannot have it."
"It would be better so."
He strove again to wrench himself away, but she would not be denied. Sheclung to him tenaciously.
"I will not let you go unless you give me your word of honor that youwill not leave the plateau, and that you will come back to me."
"I tell you that the quicker and more surely I go out of your life, thehappier and better it will be for you."
"And I tell you," said the woman resolutely, "that you can never go outof my life again, living or dead," she released him with one hand andlaid it upon her heart, "you are here."
"Enid," cried the man.
"No," she thrust him gently away with one hand yet detained him with theother--that was emblematic of the situation between them. "Not now, notyet, let me think, but promise me you will do yourself no harm, you willlet nothing imperil your life."
"As you will," said the man regretfully. "I had purposed to end it nowand forever, but I promise."
"Your word of honor?"
"My word of honor."
"And you won't break it?"
"I never broke it to a human being, much less will I do so to you?"
She released him. He went into the other room and she heard him crossthe floor and open the door and go out into the night, into the stormagain.
The Chalice Of Courage: A Romance of Colorado Page 22