"It's no use, Edith. Sir George has told me, told me for your own sake." Again he turned away, as if he were looking for a way of escape from himself, from her, from the situation. She felt a wild impulse to scream, to leap upon him and tear him to pieces, and then it came to her that that would lend color to his veiled accusations. She must go softly, cunningly, and—wait.
He walked away, over to the fireplace. Was there no way out of it? Oh, if Sir George had not spoken! If he had not known! Was there no other way? Was no compromise possible? Why should the burden of all these lives fall upon him? Why should he be handed the cross to bear? The flames, like little red demons, little fire sprites, danced here and there, threw up their hands, squirmed, writhed, trying to get away, trying to leap into the air, trying to seize an unattainable something, falling back like whipped dogs to lick and bite the smoking log! Gazing into the fantastic fire depths—he saw Wah-na-gi, and beside her John McCloud, just as they stood that fateful day he left the Red Butte Ranch. "If you do come back, you must bring this Indian woman clean hands and a pure heart, promise me that." And he had promised. And Wah-na-gi, the soul without a body, heard him promise. He had come thousands of miles that he might keep the spirit of that promise. And now all he had to do would be to let things alone, let them go on as they were going. Why should he interfere? Why should he meddle? Would any one thank him? Every one, even Yester himself, would hate him. What possible good would it do? It was too late to interfere. His own happiness was at stake too. What of that? Why should he ruin his own happiness with theirs? He would go home a free man and who would know the difference? There would be no one to blame him except his own conscience. Oh, subterfuge, subterfuge! The lying little devil flames laughed. John McCloud would know. In fact, by some clairvoyant mystery, he already knew! Even now he was saying: "And this boy is the son of your benefactor, the son of your friend."
At last he said, as if to the fire:
"I couldn't do this and then go back and face Wah-na-gi and John McCloud. I promised if I came back to come with clean hands."
"You are talking like a wild man," Edith said. "But you see I am not excited. You're not going to betray me into a scene and then accuse me of being as crazy as you are. I sit down and I am calm."
She sat down deliberately in the high-backed chair and clutched its arms, and clung to it desperately like a drowning sailor. "I have perfect self-possession, complete control of myself, and I listen, listen to a madman. Go on."
She was sincere. He was irresponsible. Nothing else would explain it.
Indeed, to most of us, those who act from altruistic motives are quite as incomprehensible as those whose acts suggest diabolical and abnormal instigation. The boy was mad. He had always been "queer." He was the son of his father.
By a supreme effort of the will she brought all her faculties to bear. She would first understand this and then she would know how to meet it. She was a resourceful woman and used to bending others to her will. He was the son of his father. Swiftly her mind climbed the stairs and bent over the invalid. Relentlessly she seized his life and dragged it out of the sick bed, and submitted it to a searching examination. All his life the Earl had been a sentimentalist. All his life he had made mistakes. The woman who loved him had once called them "glorious mistakes." Everybody else called them just mistakes. Out of quixotic love for the Countess Diana he had left England under a cloud, bearing the inevitable implication of another's guilt. Another man would have stayed in London and have been her lover. That was his first mistake. An exile, branded as a thief, he had tried to hide himself away from civilization, became a cattle-man, in a country where white women were a curiosity, was thrown by circumstances into relations with a pretty little Indian woman, had a child by her, and married the woman that he might not be the father of an illegitimate child. That was his second mistake. Any other man would have married her by tribal rites and, when he got ready, made her a present or made it worth while for some one else to marry her. When the death of Diana's husband, the real embezzler, called him back to a title and to the life and the land and the woman he loved, he chose to stay with the little savage who was the mother of his child. Another mistake! And so he continued. Sentimental again with regard to his duty to the child, he had driven the Indian mother to suicide. Free at last to marry the woman for whom he had made such fantastic sacrifices, they were both middle-aged people, the bloom to life, the blush of love was gone. Then, in the first glow of their new-found happiness, Diana died, and he was alone. What had the idealist to show for all his glorious "mistakes"? for his unselfish adhesion to a self-conscious conception of duty? It was ridiculous. We live in a practical world. That world has two standards—a theoretical one, that no one uses, and the practical one, the actual one. To try to live outside the actual is to try to reverse the law of gravitation. We have invented the theoretical standard to fool others into a course we would not take ourselves. It's a trap for the simple-minded. It was madness. Yes, this boy was the mad son of a mad sentimentalist. And these sentimentalists drag other people to ruin with them. But why should she, a practical woman, a woman of the world, the real world, be made the victim of these madmen? Her will, seldom thwarted and never tamed, rose up for battle and said, no, NO!
"I won't be a party to this, Edith," he said, looking into the fire, and the moment he had said it he began to realize what such a decision would involve.