But to give _herself_, her body, her soul! To go to this man, to live with him, to bear his name--she shrank from the thought as at the touch of white-hot iron.

When the tiny ormolu clock on her dressing-table struck five she drew up the blind. Dawn, with its coral sandals, was tiptoeing over the garden, hanging dew-diamonds on the rose-bushes, swinging her censer of multifold perfume to the waking flute of the birds. She bathed her face and smoothed her hair, then put on a dark travelling dress and packed a small bag, putting into it only linen and a few toilet-accessories, with a closed silver frame, heart-shaped, whose twin sides held miniatures of her father and mother. Last she unlocked a tin box in her drawer, took some money which it contained and put it in her pocket. Then, bag in hand, she went downstairs.

In the dining-room Nelson held up his hands, pink-lined palms outward.

"Mah Goodness, honey!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "Reck'n yo' didn' sleep 'tall las' night, what wid Ma.r.s.e Beve'ly took so yistidy. Yo' look jes' lak er ghos'. Now yo' set down en drink some hot coffee en eat plenty chick'n en waffles. Ain' gwine find nuthin' _half_ ez good on dat ar'

dinin'-cyah, nohow!"

The warmth of the coffee was grateful to her, and while the old man hovered about her she made a pretence of eating, answering his protestations with monosyllables, in fact scarcely knowing what she said, for her mind was busy with other things. 'Lige, the driver, would wait to put her on the train--she must take the up-train then, as he expected her to do. And it was an express: she could not leave it till it reached the junction, hours later. There, however, she could take the other road--the Southern. There must be an afternoon train, and that, though by a round-about way, would bring her finally to her destination.

When carriage-wheels sounded from the drive she went into the library and seated at her father's desk, wrote a note. It was to Harry Sevier.

She sealed and addressed it with a hand that shook a little, and gave it to Nelson with instructions to send it during the morning. The old negro put her into the carriage, with her bag and tucked the cover about her with loving hands.

She caught a breath, uneven like a child's. "You'll--take good care of father, Nelson?"

"Bress yo' li'l ha'at, ah'm sho' gwine watch Ma.r.s.e Beve'ly lak er _hawk_. He'll be all right, en yo' be back termorrer."

"Yes," she said faintly.

As the carriage whirled into the roadway, she turned her head to cast a straining gaze up the silent drive to the old house. Then the acacias shut it from her view.

CHAPTER XVI

DERELICT

In Harry Sevier's outer office his clerk glanced backward with a startled expression, his law-book dropping from his fingers. "That's queer," he muttered. "I never heard him laugh like that before.

Doesn't sound like a joke, somehow."

He rose and tapped lightly on the inner door, which he had closed upon his employer a moment before. But there was no response and he went back to his seat--and the volume he was studying. "Wonder if it was that note I gave him," he speculated.

The tap had fallen on deaf ears. Harry was sitting in the other room, rigidly staring at the note in question. There was on him a feeling of actual physical sickness. He did not know that he had laughed. At last he rose, and crumpling the written sheet into a ball, laid it in the fire-place and struck a match. His fingers worked clumsily and he broke several short off before a flame showed and he stooped painfully and held the match to its edge. He remained in the crouching posture while the paper blazed merrily up. In the charring heat it crackled and opened, showing for a brief instant in the baleful, blackening, light two sentences it had contained: "_Think as gently of me as you can. I can never marry you--never._"

He stood up dazedly and groped his way to a chair. So this was the end! She, Echo, whom he had thought so true, she had been playing with him--and now the game was over. To her he had been only a puppet, a card in hand to be played off, discarded for the winning of the greater point. Poor, brainless, fool that he was! There was no longer a yesterday--no dear eyes holding his, no Eden wind blowing the rose-petals nor silver stars swinging the incense of the G.o.ds! He had been living in a fairy-tale, a castle in Spain, a fool's paradise, hugging a ridiculous dream, that had had no reality to her, had been but a chapter of coquetry, to which she now wrote _finis_! "Think gently!" This was the epitaph of her flirtation with Harry Sevier--flung away, raked under, thrust from sight, a thing for the scare-crow and the scavenger!

He got up and going slowly to the window, stood many minutes with his forehead against the pane.

What remained for him? To sweep out of his life the shards of that beautiful thing that lay destroyed forever? To saunter on, with hypocritical smirk and affected nonchalance, down the empty declivity of professional habit, to an undesirable goal? To what end? Of what value had been his striving? A year ago he might have won her--no one else had had more than a slight hold upon her then. It had been that long denial that he had set himself that had undone him! What profit to him that he had won the mastery over himself, had cut the tentacle coils that were enwinding him? Of what had been the use?

There darted through his racked mind the sorry jingle that Chilly had once roared in his rooms:

"Money is dross, Loving is loss, There's never a crown that is worth its cross.

Life is a toss, Dying is moss, But booze--Oh, bully old booze, is boss!"

Why not "cut it all," as Chilly had longed to do? Plunge out along the numb, reckless way whose well-remembered mile-stones suddenly beckoned him--anyhow, anywhere, only to m.u.f.fle the pain that plucked at him--to sodden and sink himself in blessed oblivion, like a stone in a pool!

A thing that had lain torpid and dormant in the dregs of his being thrust up its head. It was as though a chain snapped in his brain, and what had been shackled there reared, savage and exultant. On the desk sat a photograph in a silver frame. Once he had been used to turn this face-down when that cabinet was opened a year ago! He picked this up and with a sudden wrench of his powerful fingers bent and broke it across again and again, crushing metal and board into a shapeless battered twist, and flung it into the fireplace. He s.n.a.t.c.hed up a heavy paper-weight and with one blow smashed in the door of the little wall-cabinet. The gla.s.s fell in a shower of silvery tinkles to the floor. He seized the black bottle that sat there--with the rusty goblet--poured the latter to the brim and drank it off--once, twice, three times.

He went into the main office. Its occupant was on his feet in alarm at the crash of shattered gla.s.s in the next room. "How much money is there on the premises?"

The clerk looked in a drawer. "About sixty dollars. It's the last payment on--"

"Give it to me," said Sevier shortly. He pocketed the wad of bills the other handed him. "I'm going on a journey--abroad," he said. "I may be gone some time--in fact, I know I shall. Don't forward anything, and close up the office till I return. You will draw, as usual, of course." In another moment he was giving directions--over the complaisant wire--to his bank. He had always kept his leisure clear by putting the small details of daily routine book-keeping, as he expressed it "on the other fellow"; however long his desertion, rent and camp-followers should be paid with regularity.

Ten minutes later his valet, in a suit of spotless white linen, let him into his apartment.

"I'm off for a vacation, Suzuki," he said. "To-night, when Bob comes for orders, tell him to put the car up till I want it. You can go to night-school and rub up your 'Yingleesh.'"

The j.a.panese blinked. "A'right," he said. "When we see you some more?"

"When I get back." Sevier lifted a book from the table. "Take this to Mr. Treadwell's--his house, not his office--you understand. There's no message; it belongs to him. Don't wait; go at once."

When he had closed the outer door on the valet, Harry drew a long breath. He opened another door and listened. He could hear Aunt Judy rattling crockery in the kitchen, humming as she laboured. He would be undisturbed, the coast was clear. His veins were beating hot now with the brandy, and the sickness was gone. In the old days the reaction had been slow and grudging. But during the year his body had refreshed itself. The inured crust of usage was stripped away, and the physical side responded speedily.

He went into his dressing-room and threw open the huge walnut wardrobe that effaced one wall. It was hung from end to end with clothing. He selected a cheap dun-coloured suit which he had purchased abroad years before for a walking-tour, of whose strenuous occupations it showed some traces in wear, a flannel shirt and a slouch hat, companion of sundry long-ago fishing excursions. He took a nail-scissors and painstakingly cut from each article its maker's name. In the bath-room, first with shears and then with a razor, he cut off his crisp dark beard: never, since his college days abroad, had he seen his own face like that.

Finally arrayed, he regarded himself in the cheval-gla.s.s. The Harry Sevier of sumptuous apparel and perfect grooming, the familiar spirit of the place, was gone. In his stead there stood an unfamiliar presence, with smooth-shaven chin and knock-about clothing. And the stranger looked from the depths of the mirror with a gaze from which something tempered and remorseful had vanished, a gaze of avid recklessness and strange, irresponsible daring, the look of one standing on the sheer verge of any hazard, welcoming any throw of the dice, fearing nothing and caring nothing.

As he stood, his hand encountered a small hard object in his pocket.

He drew it out. It was a ring, roughly made and holding an uncut emerald almost square in shape. He remembered that once, in the woods, he had bought it for a whim from some gipsy caravan--a luck ring. Much luck it had brought him! Well, it was the gipsy-road now for him. He drew off his seal ring and thrust the other on his finger in its place.

He went quickly out the front door and down to the entrance pulling his hat brim well over his eyes on issuing to the street. As he did so he grazed a lady leisurely pa.s.sing. It was the plump and pretty Mrs.

Spottiswoode. Her glance met his fairly, but there was no sign of recognition; she only drew her trim, modish skirt away from the contact as she pa.s.sed on.

He walked more rapidly now. He could scarce keep from running--would have done so but for the thronging crowds. The brandy he had drunk in the office had roused the devil of craving; it was in his throat now like the rasp of hot sand-paper and he craved more alcohol with a desperate craving that would not be denied. At the edge of the open square which held the railroad station he plunged into a saloon and pushed through its groups of loungers to the bar.

"A flask of whisky--the best you have," he said.

The bar-tender wiped his hands on his duck jacket and took down a squat bottle. "O. and S.," he said, affably. "Just blown in to town?"

Harry stared him in the eye. "Wrap that thing up, and be quick about it!" was his answer.

The man in the duck jacket muttered something under his breath, banged the package on the bar and rang up the payment on the cash-register with an angry jingle.

Harry thrust his purchase under his arm, went out, crossed the square and climbed aboard a train that was drawing out. He went rapidly forward to the smoker; there he--and the bottle he carried--would be unnoticed. As he sat down in the rear seat, the conductor pa.s.sed by.

Harry had no ticket. He handed him a bill.

"Where to?" asked the other briefly.

"How far do you go?"

"Birmingham."

"To Birmingham, then," said Harry.