She sat silently watching the last embers die. The clock in the square boomed the hour of ten. With a sigh of utter weariness she rose.
"Life for a woman," she murmured, "is safe—monotonous, perhaps, but safe—until the man comes along. And then, the old life and all its memories are gone for ever in the twinkling of an eye, and the woman's true life begins. And perhaps, after all, the old life was the better, for the new may be Heaven—and it may be hell."
CHAPTER XII
[THE FINAL OBSTACLE]
Mechanically Gordon rowed across to the darkening shore; mechanically he traveled the path to the road, and followed the road to the station; mechanically he boarded the train and sat quietly in his seat, to all outward appearances calm and indifferent, until the city lights gleamed a welcome through the dark, and the train clanked and bumped its way over the drawbridge, and passed from the silence of the night into the bustle and roar of the noisy, smoky station.
Outwardly composed, but his brain was all the while in a turmoil, so that some thought for which he was seeking would not come to his mind, but seemed constantly to keep just beyond his grasp. Far back in his brain a ghastly, haunting something still lurked and mocked him, and yet, seated there in the train, filled with its freight of every-day prosaic passengers, the stout conductor roaring the indistinguishable names of the numberless little way-stations, that terrible quarter of an hour on the island seemed fantastic, unreal, impossible of truth. He waited almost expectantly, thinking every moment to awaken as if from a nightmare, to feel some friend's hand laid upon his shoulder and to start suddenly back to life again; perchance even to see Palmer himself enter the train, and to tell him, laughing, of the curious dream.
Palmer! He pulled himself together sharply. This was no time to let his brain play him such tricks as these. Now, when he needed every atom of good judgment and cool daring at his command. Palmer himself—God! Somewhere back on the deserted island, sucked down and down into the depths of the earth, was that mangled, grinning, wide-eyed thing that had been careless, irresponsible Harry Palmer, across whose limited vision real thoughts of life—and death—had scarcely so much as passed.
With a sudden intense effort he tore his mind free from its clinging fancies. For good or ill—the meeting on the island had been real. For good or ill—the murder was done. And now, what next? How best to carry through the game, begun selfishly, recklessly perhaps, but with no plot or even thought of bodily harm to any one, and now, almost at its ending, grown suddenly desperate and black with tragedy.
Annie Holton—he wished now that he had been more deliberate, and had asked Palmer more questions—first. And yet, in doing that, there might have been greater danger still; suspicion might have been more keenly aroused, and even as it was, the situation, indeed, seemed tolerably clear. Somehow, the girl had managed to get the story from her mother, and had gone straight to Palmer with it. Would she have told any one else? Obviously not. It was to her interest only to possess and to impart the information to Palmer. And now Palmer was out of the way—and Annie Holton was left. So much for to-night, but to-morrow—ah, that was the thought that had been eluding him—tomorrow she would know of Palmer's disappearance, and she was the only person in the world who knew that when Palmer had left the city he was bound for the island. The deduction was only too obvious. Not alone his fortunes and his liberty, but his life itself, hung in this girl's power. To-night then, at any cost, he must see her; and to-night, somewhere, somehow, her silence must be assured.
Somehow—ah, it was just there that the problem lay. By what means, then, could he gain his end? His old relations with her, once so tenderly intimate, so fraught with reckless passion, could he once more recall the past, and make it live again? No, scarcely that. After deserting her for Rose, and after her betrayal of his secret; hardly, it seemed, could the breach between them be healed. And even if it were possible, there again would be Rose to reckon with. Unconsciously he frowned and shook his head. No, the way out did not lie there.