"I'm sure I don't know," Miss Jarrott mused. "Everybody is different, don't you think? And yet it sometimes seems to me that no one can be so different as I am. I always hope and hope; and you see, in this case I've been justified. We're going to have our little girl again. She's coming to make us a long, long visit. Her name is Evelyn; and once we get her here we hope she'll stay. Who knows? There may be something to keep her here. You never can tell about that. She's an orphan, with no one in the world but a stepfather, and he's blind. So who has a better right to her? I always think that people who have a right to other people should have them, don't you? Besides, he's going to Wiesbaden, to a great oculist there, so that Evelyn will come to us as her natural protectors. She's nearly eighteen now, and she wasn't eight when she left us. Oh yes, of course we've seen her since then—when we've gone to New York—but that hasn't been often. She will have changed; she'll have her hair up, and be wearing her dresses long; but I shall know her. Oh, you couldn't deceive me. I never forget a face. I'm like that. No, nor names either. I should remember you, Mr. Strange, if I met you fifty years from now. I noticed you when you first began to work for Stephens and Jarrott. So did my sister-in-law, but I noticed you first. We've often spoken of you, especially after we knew your name was Strange. It seemed to us so strange. That's a pun, isn't it? I often make them. We both thought you were like what Henry—that's Mr. Jarrott's oldest son—might have grown to, if he had been spared to us. We've had a great deal of sorrow—Oh, a great deal! It's weaned my sister-in-law away from the world altogether. She's like that. My brother, too—he isn't the same man. So when Evelyn comes we hope we shall see you often, Mr. Strange. You must begin to look on this house as your second home. Indeed, you must. It'll please my brother. I've never heard him speak of any young man as he's spoken of you. I think he sees the likeness to Henry. That'll be next year when Evelyn comes. No, I'm sorry to say it isn't to be this year. She can't leave her stepfather till he goes to Wiesbaden. Then she'll be free. Some one else is going to Wiesbaden with him. And isn't it funny, it's the same Miss Strange—the lady we were speaking of just now."
It was already some months since those words had been spoken, so that he had ceased to dwell on them; but at first they haunted him like a snatch of an air that passes through the mental hearing, and yet eludes the attempt to bring it to the lips. Even if he had had the synthetic imagination that easily puts two and two together, he had not the leisure, in the excitement of his removal to Rosario and the undertaking of his duties there, to follow up a set of clews that were scarcely more palpable than odors. Nevertheless the words came back to him from time to time, and always with the same odd suggestion of a meaning special—perhaps fatal—to himself. They came back to him at this minute, as he stood watching the loading of the Walmer Castle and breathing the fresh air off the Parana. But if they threatened danger, it was a danger that disappeared the instant he turned and faced it—leaving nothing behind but the evanescent memory of a memory, such as will sometimes remain from a dream about a dream.
IX
Another year had passed before he learned what Miss Jarrott's words were to mean to him. Knowledge came then as a flash of revelation in which he saw himself and his limitations clearly defined. His success at Rosario had been such that he had begun to think himself master of Fate; but Fate in half an hour laughingly showed herself mistress of him.
He had been called to Buenos Aires on an errand of piety and affection—to bury Monsieur Durand. The poor old unfrocked priest had been gathered to his rest, taking his secret with him—penitent, reconciled to the Church, and fortified with the Last Sacraments. Strange slipped a crucifix between the wax-like fingers, and followed—the only mourner—to the Recoleta Cemetery.
Having ordered a cross to mark the grave, he remained in town a day or two longer to attend to a small matter which for some time past he had at heart and on his conscience. It was now three or four years since he had set aside the sum lent him by the girl for whom he had still no other name than that of the Wild Olive. He had invested it, and reinvested it, till it had become a fund of some importance. Putting it now into the safest American securities, he placed them in the hands of a firm of English solicitors in Buenos Aires, with directions not only to invest the interest from time to time, but—in the event of his death—to follow certain sealed instructions with which also he intrusted them. From the few hints he was able to give them in this way he had little doubt but that her identity could be discovered, and the loan returned.
In taking these steps he could not but see that what would be feasible in case of his death must be equally feasible now; but he had two reasons for not attempting it. The first was definite and prudential. He was unwilling to risk anything that could connect him ever so indirectly with the life of Norrie Ford. Secondly, he was conscious of a vague shrinking from the payment of this debt otherwise than face to face. Apart from considerations of safety, he was unwilling to resort to the commonplace channels of business as long as there was a possibility of taking another way.
Not that he was eager to see her again. He had questioned himself on that point, and knew she had faded from his memory. Except for a vision of fugitive dark eyes—eyes of Beatrice Cenci—he could scarcely recall her features. Events during the last six years had pressed so fast on each other, life had been so full, so ardent, each minute had been so insistent that he should give it his whole soul's attention, that the antecedent past was gone like the passion no effort can recapture. As far as he could see her face at all, it looked at him out of an abyss of oblivion to which his mind found it as hard to travel back as a man's imagination to his infancy.
It was with some shame that he admitted this. She had saved him—in a sense, she had created him. By her sorcery she had raised up Herbert Strange out of the ruin of Norrie Ford, and endowed him with young vigor. He owed her everything. He had told her so. He had vowed his life to her. It was to be hers to dispose of, even at her caprice. It was what he had meant in uttering his parting words to her. But, now, that he had the power in some degree, he was doing nothing to fulfil his promise. He had even lost the desire to make the promise good.
It was not difficult to find excuses for himself. They were ready-made to his hand. There was nothing practical that he could do except what he had done about the money. Life was not over yet; and some day the chance might come to prove himself as high-souled as he should like to be. If he could only have been surer that he was inwardly sincere he would not have been uneasy over his inactivity.