Part 59 (1/2)

He blinked at the names and changed his position slightly.

”I dare say they are,” he answered coldly.

”I thought it best to see you and talk to you; and I'm glad I knew before it was too late.”

His eyes surveyed her slowly now from head to foot. Why was she glad she had known before it was too late? Her calmness made him uneasy, restless. It was a familiar characteristic of Morton Ba.s.sett that he met storm and stress stoically. He was prepared for scorn, recrimination, tears; but this dark-eyed girl, sitting before him in her gray walking-dress and plain hat with a bunch of scarlet flowers showing through the veil she had caught up over them, seemed in no danger of yielding to tears. Her voice fell in cool, even tones. He had said that he expected her, but she did not know what manner of meeting he had been counting on in his speculations. After a long look he pa.s.sed his hand across his face.

”I hope you haven't thought--you didn't think I should let them bring you into it.”

He spoke as though this were something due her; that she was ent.i.tled to his rea.s.surance that the threatened cataclysm should not drag her down with him. When she made no reply he seemed to feel that he had not made himself clear, and he repeated, in other terms, that she need not be concerned for the outcome; that he meant to s.h.i.+eld her.

”Yes; I supposed you would do that; I had expected that.”

”And,” he went on, as though to antic.i.p.ate her, to eliminate the necessity for her further explanations, ”you have a right to ask what you please. Or we can meet again to arrange matters. I am prepared to satisfy your demands in the fullest sense.”

His embarra.s.sment had pa.s.sed. She had sought the interview, but he had taken charge of it. Beyond the closed door the stage waited. This was the briefest interlude before the moment of his triumphant entrance.

Sylvia smiled, an incredulous smile, and shook her head slowly, like a worn, tired mother whose patience is sorely taxed by a stubborn, unyielding child at her knee. Her lips trembled, but she bent her head for a moment and then spoke more quickly than before, as though overriding some inner spirit that strove rebelliously within her breast.

”I know--almost all I ever need to know. But there are some things you must tell me now. This is the first--and the last--time that I shall ever speak to you of these things. I know enough--things I have stumbled upon--and I have built them up until I see the horror, the blackness.

And I want to feel sure that you, too, see the pity of it all.”

Her note of subdued pa.s.sion roused him now to earnestness, and he framed a disavowal of the worst she might have imagined. He could calm her fears at once, and the lines in his face relaxed at the thought that it was in his power to afford her this relief.

”I married your mother. There was nothing wrong about it. It was all straight.”

”And you thought, oh, you thought I came for that--you believed I came to have you satisfy me of her honor! I never doubted her!” and she lifted her head proudly. ”And that is what you thought I came for?” The indignation that flashed in her first stammered sentences died falteringly in a contemptuous whisper.

Her words had cut him deep; he turned away aimlessly, fingering some papers on the table beside him. Then he plunged to the heart of the matter, as though in haste to exculpate himself.

”I never meant that it should happen as it did. I knew her in New York when we were both students there. My father had been ill a long time; he was bent upon my marrying the daughter of his old friend Singleton, a man of wealth and influence in our part of the state. I persuaded your mother to run away and we were married, under an a.s.sumed name,--but it was a marriage good in law. There's no question of that, you understand.

Then I left her up there in the Adirondacks, and went home. My father's illness was prolonged, and his condition justified me in asking your mother to wait. She knew the circ.u.mstances and agreed to remain away until I saw my way clear to acknowledging her and taking her home. You were born up there. Your mother grew impatient and hurt because I could not go back to her. But I could not--it would have ruined all my chances at home. When I went to find my wife she had disappeared. She was a proud woman, and I suppose she had good cause for hating me.”

He told the story fully, filling in the gaps in her own knowledge. He did not disguise the fact of his own half-hearted search for the woman he had deserted. He even told of the precautions he had taken to a.s.sure himself of the death of Edna Kelton by visiting Montgomery to look at her grave before his marriage to Hallie Singleton. He had gone back again shortly before he made the offer to pay for Sylvia's schooling, and had seen her with her grandfather in the little garden among the roses.

Outside the guard slowly pa.s.sed back and forth. Sylvia did not speak; her seeming inattention vexed and perplexed him. He thought her lacking in appreciation of his frankness.

”Thatcher knows much of this story, but he doesn't know the whole,” he went on. ”He believes it was irregular. He's been keeping it back to spring as a sensation. He's told those men out there that he can break me; that at the last minute he will crush me. They're waiting for me now--Thatcher and his crowd; probably chuckling to think how at last they've got me cornered. That's the situation. They think they're about rid of Morton Ba.s.sett.”

”You left her; you deserted her; you left her to die alone, unprotected, without even a name. You accepted her loyalty and fidelity, and then threw her aside; you slunk away alone to her grave to be sure she wouldn't trouble you again. Oh, it is black, it is horrible!”

Sylvia was looking at him with a kind of awed wonder in her eyes. For an instant there had been a faint suggestion of contrition in his tone, but it was overwhelmed by his desire for self-justification. It was of himself he was thinking, not of the deed in itself, not of the woman he had left to bear her child in an alien wilderness.

”I tried to do what I could for you. I want you to know that. I meant to have cared for you, that no harm should come to you,” he said, and the words jarred upon his own ears as he spoke them.

In her face there was less of disdain than of marvel. He wished to escape from her eyes, but they held him fast. Messengers ran hurriedly through the corridors; men pa.s.sed the door talking in tones faintly audible; but the excitement in the rival camps communicated nothing of its intensity to this quiet chamber. Men had feared Morton Ba.s.sett; this girl, with her wondering dark eyes, did not fear him. But he was following a course he had planned for this meeting, and he dared not s.h.i.+ft his ground.

”I don't want you to think that I haven't been grieved to see you working for your living; I never meant that you should do that.

Hereafter that will be unnecessary; but I am busy to-night. To-morrow, at any time you say, we will talk of those things.”