CHAPTER XXXV.
THE JAIL VISITOR.
The light was behind Colina, and Ambrose could not at first read her expression. There was something changed in her aspect; her chin was not carried so high.
She was wearing a plain blue linen dress, and her hair was done low over her ears. Colina was one of the women who unconsciously dress to suit their moods.
She looked different now, but she was indisputably Colina.
The sight of her dear shape caused him the same old shock of astonishment. All the blood seemed to forsake his heart; he put a hand against the wall behind him for support.
He presently distinguished changes in her face also. It bore the marks of sleeplessness and suffering. Pride still made her eyes reticent and cold, but the old outrageous arrogance was gone.
In the wave of tenderness for her that engulfed him he clean forgot the self-pleasing defiance he had imagined for himself, forgot his desperate situation, forgot everything but her.
He was unable to speak, and Colina did not immediately offer to. She stood a step inside the door, with her hand on the back of the one chair the room contained. Her eyes were cast down. It was Emslie who broke the silence.
"Do you wish me to stay?" he respectfully asked Colina.
She raised grave eyes to Ambrose. "Is there anything I can do for you?" she asked evenly.
"Yes," said Ambrose breathlessly.
After a moment's hesitation she said to Emslie: "Please wait outside."
Ambrose's heart leaped up. No sooner had the door closed behind Emslie than, forgetting everything, it burst its bonds. "Colina! How good of you to come! It makes me so happy to see you! If you knew how I had hungered and thirsted for a sight of you! How charming you look in that dress! Your hair is done differently, too. I swear it is like the sun shining in here. You look tired. Sit down. Have some tea. What a fool I am! You don't want to eat in a jail, do you?"
Her eyes widened with amazement at his outburst.
She shrank from him.
"Don't be afraid," he said. "I'm not going to touch you—a jailbird! I'm not fooling myself. I know how you feel toward me. I can't help it. If you knew how I had been bottled up! I must speak to some one or go clean off my head. It makes me forget just to see you. Ah, it was good of you to come!"
"I am visiting all the prisoners," Colina was careful to explain. "And getting them what they need for the journey to-morrow."
It pulled him up short. He glanced at her with an odd smile, tender, bitter, and grim. "Charity!" he murmured. "Thanks, I have plenty of warm clothes, and so forth."
Colina bit her lip. There was a silence. He gazed at her hungrily. She was so dear to him it was impossible for him to be otherwise than tender.
"Just the same, it was mighty good of you to come," he said.
"You said there was something I could do for you," she murmured.
"Please sit down."
She did so.
"I don't want to beg any personal favors," he said. "There is something you might do for the sake of justice."
"Never mind that," she said. "What is it?"
"Let me have a little pride, too," he said. "It isn't easy to ask favors of your enemies. I am surrounded by those who hate me and believe me guilty. Naturally, I stand as much chance of a fair trial as a spy in wartime. I'm just beginning to understand that. At first I thought as long as one's conscience was clear nothing could happen."
"What is it I can do?" she asked again.
"I am taking for granted you would like to see me get off," Ambrose went on. "Admitting that—that the old feeling is dead and all that—still it can't be exactly pleasant for you to feel that you once felt that way toward a murderer and a traitor—"
"Please, please—" murmured Colina.
"You see you have a motive for helping me," Ambrose insisted. "I thought first of Simon Grampierre. He's under arrest. Then I asked to be allowed to see Germain, his son. The inspector wouldn't have it. I gave up hope after that. But the sight of you makes me want to defend myself still. I thought maybe you would have a note carried to Germain for me."
"Certainly," she said.
"You shall read it," he said eagerly, "so you can satisfy yourself there's nothing treasonable."
She made a deprecating gesture.
"I'll write it at once," he said. He carried the tray to the bed.
Colina gave him the chair.
"They let me have writing materials," Ambrose went on with a rueful smile. "I think they hope I may write out a confession some night."
To Germain Grampierre he wrote a plain, brief account of Nesis, and made clear what a desperate need he had of finding her.
"Will you read it?" he asked Colina.
She shook her head. He handed it to her unsealed, and she thrust it in her dress.
"I'm ever so much obliged to you," he said, trying to keep up the reasonable air. "How pretty your hair looks that way!" he added inconsequentially. The words were surprised out of him.
She turned abruptly. It was beginning to be dark in the shack, and he could no longer see into her face.
Her movement was too much for his self-control. "Ah, must you go?" he cried sharply. "Another minute or two! It will be dreadful here after you've gone!"
"What's the use?" she whispered.
"True," he said harshly. "What's the use?" He turned his back on her.
"Good night, and thank you."
She lingered, hand upon the doorlatch. "Isn't there—isn't there something else I can do?" she asked.
"No, thank you."
Still she stayed. "You haven't touched your supper," she said in a small voice. "Mayn't I—send you something from the house?"
"No!" he cried swiftly. "Not your pity—nor your charity, neither!"
Colina fumbled weakly with the latch—and her hand dropped from it.
"Why don't you go?" he cried sharply. "I can't stand it. I know you hate me. I tell myself that every minute. Be honest and show you hate me, not act sorry!"
"I do not hate you," she whispered.
He faced her with a kind of terror in his eyes. "For God's sake, go!" he cried. "You're building up a hope in me—it will kill me if it comes to nothing! I can't stand any more. Go!"
His amazed eyes beheld her come falteringly toward him, reaching out her hands.
"Ambrose—I—I can't!" she whispered.
He caught her in his arms.
Colina broke into a little tempest of weeping, and clung to him like a child. He held her close, stroking her hair and murmuring clumsy, broken phrases of comfort.
"Don't! My dear love, don't grieve so! It's all right now. I can't bear to have you hurt."
"I love you!" she sobbed. "I have never stopped loving you! It was something outside of me that persuaded me to hate you. I've been living in a hell since that night! And to find you like this! Nothing to eat but bread and salt pork! Every word you said was like a knife in my breast. And not a single word of reproach!"
"There!" he said, trying to laugh. "You didn't put me here."
She finally lifted a tear-stained face. Clinging to his shoulders and searching his eyes, she said: "Swear to me that you are innocent, and I'll never have another doubt."
He shook his head. "No more swearing!" he said. "If you let yourself be persuaded by the sound of the words, as soon as you left me and heard the others you'd doubt me again. It's got to come from the inside. Words don't signify."
Colina hung her head. "You're right," she said in a humbled voice. "I guess I just wanted an excuse to save my pride. I do believe in you—with my whole heart. I never really doubted you—I was ashamed, afraid, I don't know what. I was a coward. But I suffered for it—every night. Do you despise me?"
He laughed from a light breast.
"Despise you? That's funny! It was natural. A damnable combination of circumstances. I never blamed you."
They were silent for a few moments. She looked up to find him smiling oddly.
"What is it?" she asked.
"Nothing much," he said. "I was thinking—human beings are sort of elastic, aren't they? After all I've been through the last few days—you don't know!—and then this—you dear one! It's a wonder the shock didn't kill me—but I feel fine! Just peaceful. I don't care what happens now."
It was Colina's turn to lavish her pent-up tenderness upon him then.
After a while she disengaged herself from his arms. "They will wonder what makes me stay so long," she murmured. "And my eyes are red. Emslie will see when I go out."
Ambrose poured out water in his basin. "Dabble your eyes in this," he said. "When you're ready to go I'll call Emslie in. Coming in from the light, he won't notice anything. You can slip out ahead of him."
Colina bathed her face as he suggested. Catching each other's eyes, they blushed and laughed.
"We must decide quickly what we're going to do," she said hastily.
"First read that letter," said Ambrose.
She read it, leaning back against his shoulder. "A woman!" she said in a changed voice and straightened up. She read further. "She helped you escape!" Colina turned and faced him. "She believed in you, eh?" she said, her lip curling.
Ambrose's heart sank. "Now, Colina—" he began. "Why, she never thought anything about it!"
Colina consulted the letter again. "She ran away with you!" she cried accusingly.
"Followed me," corrected Ambrose.
"She was in love with you!" Colina's voice rang bitterly.
"Are you beginning to doubt me already?" he cried, aghast. "Be reasonable! You know how it is with these native girls. The sight of a white man hypnotizes them. You can't have lived here without seeing it. Do you blame me for that?"
She paid no attention to the question. Struggling to command herself, she said: "Answer me one question. It is my right. Did you ever kiss her?"
Ambrose groaned in spirit, and cast round in his mind how to answer.
"You hesitate!" cried Colina, suddenly beside herself. "You did! Ah, horrible!" She violently scrubbed her own lips with the back of her hand. "A brown girl! A teepee-dweller! A savage! Ugh! That's what men are!"
An honest anger nerved Ambrose. He roughly seized her wrists. "Listen!" he commanded in a tone that silenced her. "As I bade her good-by on the shore she asked me to. She had just risked death to get me out, remember—worse than death perhaps. What should I have done? Answer me that!"
Colina refused to meet the question. Her assumption of indifference was very painful to see. She was not beautiful then. "Don't ask me," she said with a sneer. "I suppose men understand such women. I cannot."
Ambrose turned away with a helpless gesture. Colina moved haughtily toward the door. Within ten minutes their wonderful happiness had been born and strangled again.
"I don't suppose you will want to send my letter now," Ambrose said with a sinking heart.
Colina blushed with shame, but she would not let him see it. "Certainly," she said coldly. "What has this to do with a question of justice?"
Ambrose, sore and indignant, would not make any more overtures. "There's a postscript I must add," he said coldly, extending his hand for the letter.
"I cannot wait for you to write it," she said. "Tell me. I will add it myself."
"I think it likely," Ambrose said, "that Nesis"—Colina winced at the
sound of the name—"has been spirited away from the Kakisa village.
There are two other villages, one on Buffalo Lake and one on Kakisa
Lake, about sixty miles up the Kakisa River.
"They brought her up the river with me, so it is hardly likely she was sent down again to Buffalo Lake. I think she's at Kakisa Lake, if she's alive."
Colina bowed. "I will tell Germain Grampierre," she said. Her hand rose to the door.
Ambrose's heart failed him. "Ah, Colina!" he cried reproachfully and imploringly.
She slipped out without answering.
Ambrose flung himself on his bed and cursed fate again. He was not experienced enough to realize that this was not necessarily a fatal break.
All night he tried to steel his heart against fate and against Colina. It was harder now. It was an utterly wretched Ambrose that faced the dawn.
While it was still early Emslie passed him a note through the window.
Ambrose knew the handwriting, and tore it open with trembling fingers.
He read:
MY DEAR LOVE:
I was hateful. It was the meanest kind of jealousy. I was furious at her because she helped you at the time when I was on the side of your enemies. I have been suffering torments all night. Forgive me. I am going to find Nesis myself. That is the only way I can make up for everything. I love you.