“To love, did you say? What is love?” he rejoined coldly, scarcely even bitterly. But beneath the now fast yielding crust the molten fires were raging. “Too strong, too self-contained did you say? Well for me that I am. But if you would care to hear that episode I will tell it you—now.”
She made no answer beyond a bend of the head. Why did he torture her thus? He was exacting to the last fraction a truly terrible revenge. For were he murderer, midnight robber, twenty times over, it made no difference to her now. She loved him, as that six months of separation, final as she thought it, had taught her how she could love. And he, triumphing in his strength, in his ultra-human, well-nigh demoniacal capacity for self-control, he was tearing her very heart strings. It was a refinement of cruelty. Yet her only fear was lest this meeting—they two, alone together at last—should be shortened by a single moment. Still she kept tight hold of his hands, half-mechanically now.
The vessel was gliding smoothly through the oily waters of the tropical sea: the clang of the engines, the throb of the propeller, the soft wash of the wave from her stem, the only sounds. The surface was flooded with patches of phosphorescent light, and here and there in the dim offing hung a dark and heavy rain-cloud.
“The facts are very ordinary and soon told,” he began. “Denton was a distant relative of mine, and we had grown up close friends from boyhood. Then we became rivals—in love, you understand—and I was the favoured one, for I was well off in those days. I believed in people then—a little—consequently the last thing I dreamt of was to suspect Denton of being the thief and liar he afterwards turned out. He had the management of all my affairs, for he was a little older than I, and shrewd and clever; and, as he afterwards told me, in pursuance of a set purpose of revenge he started to ruin me. He succeeded, too, and that very soon, and so completely as to divert pretty nearly all that had belonged to me into his own pocket; so craftily too, that the law was powerless to touch him. For I was something bad in the way of a fool in those days, and trusted everybody. Well, I stood ruined; a very ordinary and every-day occurrence.
“Then I began to find out the real meaning of the word, love—the real worth of tenderness and passion and inexhaustible vows. I have found out since on more than one occasion, but it did me no harm, because then I knew what the upshot would be, and merely stood by watching into which hole the solitaire marble would find its end, and laughed. That first time though, it hurt. It was badly done, too; badly and heartlessly, and after a while John Denton stepped into my shoes. All this, of course, took some little time; but it is commonplace enough, so I pass over, it quickly.
“Well, I had learned a thing or two by then, so I made no sign that I even felt I had been wronged. I took a leaf out of their book, and professed great friendliness still. You know—the frank and can’t-be-helped sort of article. I meant to lie low and wait, but I meant to be even with master John one of these days. So I went to America, and led a strange, hard, knock-about life for some time. I was in the thick of it through ’66 and ’67, when all the Plains tribes were out on the war-path; and it was in one of those ructions that I came by that queer double scar, for it was chipped out by an Indian arrow whose tip had become curiously split.
“Well, I was watching my opportunity, and it came at last; came earlier than I expected. Denton soon got into difficulties, for he was an awful gambler, and lost pretty nearly all he was worth; all that should have been mine. What easier than to induce him to come out West? There were always openings there. For, mind you, I had remained on outwardly friendly terms with him.
“He came, and from the moment he did so, I determined to kill him, not as I eventually did, that was more than three parts accident, but in fair stand-up fight. The worst of me is I am of the most vindictive temperament in the world, I cannot forgive—still less could I then. We went into all sorts of things together, but all the time I hated him—all the time I was only watching my opportunity.
“I meant that he should meet me in fair fight, that we should stand an even chance. But that night at Stillwell’s Flat, when he came back after a successful gamble, more self-sufficient, more overbearing than ever, I could hold back no longer. I proposed to him that we should fight it out—a duel à outrance. But he came at me unawares, swearing I wanted to plunder him of his winnings; came at me with an axe. We had a desperate struggle, an awful struggle. It was touch and go with either of us, and then all the devils in me were let loose as I thought of what he had done. I killed him—killed him without mercy.
“I will spare you a repetition of the detail, which to you would be horrible; and it was horrible. Yet, even then I did not regret it, nor have I ever done so since. But the instinct of self-preservation arose at once. Had he fallen in an open and daylight quarrel, sympathy would have been with me, or at any rate I should have been held harmless. But there was a dark and murderous look about a secret and midnight deed, which would in all probability mean swift and unreasoning retribution. So by way of obscuring the trail I hid away the money, thinking, like the fool I was, that that would divert suspicion from myself, that no one would suspect me of killing a man for the sake of a few hundred dollars. Another idea occurred to me. The Sioux were ‘bad’ around there just then. By putting their mark upon the body—the throat cutting—I might throw the suspicion on to them. Then I departed, intending to return shortly and affect unbounded surprise. But I fell in with a war-party, and was clean cut off from the settlements; and the running I had to make for nearly two weeks right through the Indian country simply bristles with marvels. Well, the affair was after all a very commonplace instance of vendetta, with no sordid motive underlying it. There the dollars are still; I could put my hand upon them at any moment, unless, that is to say, somebody else has already done so, which isn’t probable. Now you have the whole story, and can hardly be surprised that I had learned caution, and was not one to give away all my life’s history to the latest comer.”