The Price. Lynde Francis
stopped her with a quick little gesture.
"I know what you are going to say: that I should have been willing to work, or even to beg, rather than steal. I was willing to work; I was not willing to beg. I know it is all wrong from your point of view; but I should be sorry to have you think that I did what I believed to be wrong."
"Surely you must know it is wrong?"
"Pardon me, but I can't admit that. If I could, you would be relieved of what is doubtless a very painful duty. I should surrender myself at once."
"But think of it; if you are right, every one else must be wrong!"
"No; not quite every one. But that is a very large question, and we needn't go into it. I confess that my method was unconventional; a little more summary than that of the usurers and the strictly legal robbers, but quite as defensible. For they rob the poor and the helpless, while I merely dispossessed one rich corporation of a portion of its exactions from the many."
"Then you are not sorry? I saw you yesterday afternoon and hoped you were."
He laughed unpleasantly. "I was sorry, then, and I am now; for the same reason. I have lost the money."
"Lost it?" she gasped, "How?"
"I had hidden it, and I suppose some one else has found it. It is all right, so far as the ownership is concerned; but I am still self-centred enough to be chagrined about it."
"But that is nothing!" she protested, with sharp regret in her voice; "now you can never return it!"
"I didn't intend to," he assured her, gravely. "I did have some notion of redistributing it fairly among those who need it most; but that was all."
"But you must have returned it in the end. You could never have been content to keep it."
"Do you think so?" he rejoined. "I think I could have been quite content to keep it. But that is past; it is gone, and I couldn't return it if I wanted to."
"No," she acquiesced; "and that makes it all the harder."
"For you to do what you must do? But you mustn't think of that. I shouldn't have made restitution in any event. Let me tell you what I did. I had a weapon, as you have read. I tied it up with the money in a handkerchief. There was always the chance of their catching me, and I had made up my mind that my last free act would be to drop the bundle into the river. So you see you need not hesitate on that score."
"Then you know what it is that I must do?"
"Assuredly. I knew it yesterday, when I saw that you had recognized me. It was very merciful in you to reprieve me, even for a few hours; but you will pardon me if I say it was wrong?"
"Wrong!" she burst out. "Is it generous to say that to me? Are you so indifferent yourself that you think every one else is indifferent, too?"
He smiled under cover of the darkness, and the joy of finding that his ideal was not going to be shattered was much greater than any thought of the price he must pay to preserve it. When she paused, he had his answer ready.
"I know you are not indifferent; you couldn't be. But you must be true to yourself, at whatever cost. Will you go to Captain Mayfield now?"
She hesitated.
"I thought of doing that, at first," she began, postponing to a more convenient season the unnerving reflection that she was actually discussing the ways and means of it with him. "It seemed to be the simplest thing to do. But then I saw what would happen; that I should be obliged——"
Again he stopped her with a gesture.
"I understand. We must guard against that at all hazards. You must not be dragged into it, you know, even remotely."
"How can you think of such things at such a time?" she queried.
"I should be unworthy to stand here talking to you if I didn't think of them. But since you can't go to Captain Mayfield, what will you do? What had you thought of doing?"
"I wrote a letter to—to Mr. Galbraith," she confessed.
"And you have not sent it?"
"No. If I had, I shouldn't have spoken to you."
"To be sure. I suppose you signed the letter?"
"Certainly."
"That was a mistake. You must rewrite it, leaving out your name, and send it. All you need to say is that the man who robbed the Bayou State Security is escaping on the Belle Julie; that he is disguised as a deck-hand, and that his name on the steamer's books is John Wesley Gavitt. That will be amply sufficient."
"But that isn't your name," she asserted.
"No; but that doesn't matter. It is the name that will find me."
She was silent for a moment. Then: "Why mustn't I sign it? They will pay no attention to an anonymous letter. And, besides, it seems so—so cowardly."
"They will telegraph to every river landing ahead of us within an hour after your letter reaches New Orleans; you needn't doubt that. And the suppression of your name isn't cowardly; it is merely a justifiable bit of self-protection. It is your duty to give the alarm; but when you have done that, your responsibility ceases. There are plenty of people who can identify me if I am taken back to New Orleans. You don't want to be summoned as a witness, and you needn't be."
She saw the direct, man-like wisdom of all this, and was quick to appreciate his delicate tact in effacing the question of the reward without even referring to it. But his stoicism was almost appalling.
"It is very shocking!" she murmured; "only you don't seem to realize it at all."
"Don't I? You must remember that I have been arguing from your point of view. My own is quite unchanged. It is your duty to do what you must do; it is my affair to avert the consequences to myself, if I can manage it without taking an unfair advantage of your frankness."
"What will you do?"
"It would be bad faith now for me to try to run away from the steamer, as I meant to do. So far, you have bound me by your candor. But beyond that I make no promises. My parole will be at an end when the officers appear, and I shall do what I can to dodge, or to escape if I am taken. Is that fair?"
"It is more than fair: I can't understand."
"What is it that you can't understand?"
"How you can do this; how you can do such things as the one you did last night, and still——"
He finished the sentence for her.—"And still be a common robber of banks, and the like. I fancy it is a bit puzzling—from your point of view. Sometime, perhaps, we shall all understand things better than we do now, but to that time, and beyond it, I shall be your grateful debtor for what you have done to-night. May I go now?"
She gave him leave, and when he was gone, she went to her state-room to write as he had suggested. An hour later she gave the newly written letter to the night clerk; and the thing was done.
During the remainder of the slow up-river voyage to St. Louis, Charlotte Farnham lived as one who has fired the fuse of a dynamite charge and is momently braced for the shock of the explosion. Each morning she assured herself that the strange man who could be a self-confessed felon one moment and a chivalrous gentleman the next was still a member of the Belle Julie's crew; but she became a coward of landings, not daring to look on for fear she should see him arrested and taken away.
And while the Belle Julie put landing after landing astern and the voyage grew older, Griswold, too, began to feel the pangs of suspense. Though he had no thought of breaking his promise, the dread of capture and trial and punishment grew until it became a threatening cloud to obscure all horizons. It was to no purpose that he called himself hard names and strove to rise superior to the overshadowing threat. It was there, and it would not be ignored. And when he faced it fairly a new dread arose in his heart; the fear that his fear might end