CHAPTER x.x.xI

CONFESSIONS

A groping hand touched her arm; bandaged fingers sought to feel who she was. Behind her sounded a drowsy incoherent murmur. The snarl of the wolf had roused the sleeper from his torpor.

"Hush--hush!" she whispered. "It is all well. I am here by you. Lie still."

"Isobel!" he murmured. "Isobel!"

"Yes, dear!" she soothed. "I am here. Rest--go to sleep again. All is well."

"All is--?" He roused a little more. "You say--Then he is safe! They have brought him up--out of that h.e.l.l!"

She could not lie outright. "He will soon be safe. By morning help will have come to us. As soon as the men can see to go down, they will descend for him. They will bring him up the way that you have shown us!"

Her voice quivered with pride of what he had done. She drew up his hand and pressed her lips tenderly upon the bandages.

Had the caress been a burn, he could not have more quickly s.n.a.t.c.hed the hand away. He sought to rise, and struck his head against the overhanging rock.

"Where am I? Let me out!" he said.

"No, you must not! Lie still! You must not!" she remonstrated.

"Lie still?" he repeated. "Lie still! with him down there--alone!"

"But it is night--midnight. It will be hours before even the moon rises."

"And he down there--alone! Help me make ready. I am going down to him."

"Going down? But you cannot! It is midnight!"

"There is a lantern. I shall take that. It will be easier than in the daytime, for I shall not see those sickening precipices below."

He sought to creep out past her. She clutched his arm.

"No, no! do not go! There is no need! Wait until they come. You have done your share--far more than your share! Wait!"

"I cannot," he replied. "I must go down to him. I have no right to be up here, and he still down there."

"You must!" she urged, clinging tighter to his arm. "You may fall. I am afraid! I cannot bear it! Do not go! Stay with me--say that you will stay with me--dearest!"

"Good G.o.d!" he cried, tearing himself away from her, "To let you say it--say it to me!"

"Dearest!" she repeated. "Dearest, do not go! There is no need! I cannot bear it! Do not go!"

"No need? My G.o.d! When I could fling myself over, if it were not for him! To have let you say it--to me--to a liar! thief! murderer!"

"Dearest!" she whispered. "Hush! You are delirious--you do not know--"

"It is you who do not know!" he cried. "But you shall--everything--all my cowardly baseness!" The confession burst from him in a torrent of self-denunciation--"That trip to town, when we went to fetch them, I lied to you about those bridge plans. It was not true that I found them. He handed them to me. He took no receipt. I looked at them and saw how wonderful they were. I stole them. My father had threatened to cast me off if I did not do something worth while. I was desperate. So I stole your brother's plans. I copied them--"

"You know about Tom!" she interrupted. "But of course. You saw me tell him, there at the ravine."

"I saw you put your arms about his neck and kiss him; but I did not hear--I did not see the truth. I believed--that is the worst of it all--I believed it possible that you--_you_--!... That devil Gowan....

But that is no excuse. Had I not already doubted you.... And I went down--down into h.e.l.l, with only one purpose--to make certain that he never should come up again!"

"Dear Christ!" whispered the girl--"Dear Christ! He has gone mad!"

"No, Isobel," he said, his voice slow and dead with the calm of utter despair, "I am not mad. I have never been mad except for a little while after you put your arms about his neck. No--For years I was a fool, a profligate fool, wasting my life as I wasted all those thousands of dollars that I had not earned. I turned thief--a despicable sneak thief. At last the dirty crime found me out. I received a small share of the punishment that I deserved. Then you took me in--without question--treated me as a man. G.o.d knows I tried to be one!"

"You were!--you are!" she broke in. "This is all a mistake--a cruel, hideous mistake!"

"I tried to go," he went on unflinchingly. "You urged me to stay. I was weak. I could not force myself to leave you."

"Because--because!" she murmured.

"All the more reason why I should have gone," he replied. "But I was weak, unfit. I lied to you and won your pity. You gave me the chance to stay and prove myself what I am. Down there, when he told me what I should have guessed--what I must have guessed had not my own baseness blinded me to the truth--when he told me he was your brother, I saw myself, my real self,--my shriveled, black, h.e.l.lish soul. Now you see why I must go down again. I can never make reparation for what I have done. But I can at least go down to him."

"You take all the blame on yourself!" she protested. "What if I had confessed my secret, there at the first, when Tom sprang down from the car and I knew him."

"If you had told, then I should not have been tempted to doubt you, and I should have gone on, it might have been forever, with that lie and that theft between us--and I should not have been forced to see, as I now see, my absolute unworthiness of you."

"Of me!" she cried shrilly, and she burst into wild hysterical laughter. It broke off as abruptly as it began. "Unworthy of me--of me? the daughter of a drunken mother, the sister of a girl who--" A sob choked her. She went on desperately: "You have told me all. But I--do you not wonder why I kept silent--why I denied Mary by my silence? You say you sought to harm Tom--down there. You did not know he was my brother. You thought he would harm me. Is it not so?"

"I doubted you!"

"Why? Because I failed to tell the truth. I feared to hurt him--to make trouble between him and his rich, high-bred wife. As if I should not have known better the moment I saw Genevieve! Dear sister! she knows all. But you--Either I should have spoken, or I should have hidden all my fondness for him. But I could not hide my love for him--and I was ashamed to tell."

"Ashamed--you?"

"We lived in the slums. They told me my father was a big man, a man such as Tom is now. He was a railroad engineer. He was killed when I was a baby. Then we sank into the slums. My mother--she died when I was twelve. There was then only Mary and I and Tom. He could make only a little, working at odd jobs. Mary and I worked in a factory. Even she was under age. When I was going on fourteen there came a terrible winter when thousands were out of work. We almost starved."

"You--starved!" murmured Ashton. "Starved! And I was starting in at college, flinging away money!"

"Tom tried to force people to let him work," the girl went on drearily. "He was violent. They put him in jail. Soon Mary and I had nothing left. There was no work for us. We had sold everything that anyone would buy. The rent was overdue. They turned us out--on the streets.... I was too young; but Mary.... She found a place where I could stay. They were decent people, but hard....

"The weather was bitterly cold. She was taken sick. When the people with whom I was staying heard what she had done, they refused to help.

I begged in the street. I was very small and thin. The--the beasts did not trouble me. Then, when Mary was very sick, I met Daddy. I begged from him. He did not give me a nickel and pa.s.s on. He stopped and made me talk--he made me take him to Mary.

"He had her moved to the best hospital.... It was too late.... I also had pneumonia. They said I would die. But Daddy brought me home just as soon as I could be moved. The railroad was then a hundred miles from Dry Mesa. But he kept me wrapped in furs, and all the way he carried me in his arms. Do you wonder why I love him so?... That is all. You see now why I shrank from telling--why I denied Mary."

"She is in Heaven," said Ashton--"in Heaven, where some day you will go. But I--I--" She could see no more than the vague blotch of his white face in the darkness, but his voice told her the anguish of his look. "He was right--your brother. He told me that we always take with us the heaven or the h.e.l.l that we each have made for ourselves.... I have lost you.... You know now why I am going down to do the little that I can do."

"You are going down?" she asked wonderingly. "You still say that you are going down? Yet I have told you about--Mary!"

"If you were she, I still would be utterly unfit to look you in the face. I shall go to the camp for the lantern. There were other gloves and some of my clothing."