Why not? He was free—free to be himself again. Only one, beside Echo, had known that he and the captured house-breaker were identical—that was Craig. And Craig had been taken from his path. And who else would connect Harry Sevier, the lawyer, the club-man of well-known and reputable past, the favourite of drawing-rooms—who could ever associate him with a tawdry burglar and desperate convict who had escaped from a penitentiary in another State? Once more bearded and eye-glassed, without scar or mark to point resemblance or beckon identification, recognition would be the wildest improbability.
Once, as he bettered, Jubilee Jim had gone to the valley below to return with a bundle of back-copies of the County newspaper, and as Harry pored over these avidly, the old life had cried to him from every line. The movement that had been called into life by the Civic Club, in the hour when he had made the first speech of his life that had been untinctured with any personal ambition or selfish motive, had gained momentum; it had taken on party organisation and would be a force to be reckoned with in the coming campaign. On that day he had had his first taste of the joy of battle for a principle, and he longed inexpressibly to throw the power, of which he was now more than ever conscious, into the struggle for the new ideal.
Suppose he went back, and Craig recovered the mind that was now in eclipse—recovered and remembered? What then?
His safety lay in the fact that no one possessed the clue to the unthinkable reality. Craig, if he recovered, would possess this, and if he in his right senses denounced him, the accusation, spectacular and incredible as it might seem, would have to be seriously met. And he could not meet it, for it would be true! So long as Craig lived, the harrowing danger would always be there—a veritable Sword of Damocles! Would not his future be forever a dubious adventure, haunted always by a torturing shadow and the dread of discovery and shame? In fancy he saw himself seized—to be suddenly confronted with that shameful thing, to face a cloud of witnesses, be dragged back to a cell, despised and broken, once more a convict—that, or else flight, cringing and furtive, with the hounds of the law in cry!
And yet, did not the chances that Craig would not regain his faculties vastly preponderate? The newspapers Harry had read had not contained the item chronicling Craig's journey to Buda-Pesth, and recovery was not an imminent possibility to his mind. A year had gone by, and all the skill that wealth could invoke had no doubt been applied, and vainly. Even if sometime he to some extent recovered, it was more than likely that his memory of that fatal night in his library would be impaired. So Harry told himself.
Over and over he followed the trail of painful reflection, in a vicious circle that centred always in the one thought that sent his mind shrinking in upon itself—Echo. What would that old life be to him, denied its old relations? He and she were nothing to one another any more: she was only a stinging memory. And he would see her, meet her, talk with her, always with that sickening pretence of ignorance between them, in a painful hypocrisy, till she should love and marry—some one else than him! A wave of sick revolt had surged over him at the thought. What to him was freedom, even life itself, if each hour held the thumb-screw and the rack?
Thus his resolve had swung back and forth, pendulum-like, tiring itself with the endless question, and much thinking had brought him no nearer a solution. Meanwhile time had been passing, and pending final decision it was necessary for him in some measure to pick up the old threads. There were responsibilities which he had not yet laid down. There were his apartment, his servants, his office—for though provision of a sort had fortunately been made for a time, his affairs must now be put upon a securer basis which would permit of his taking whatever course should seem best. So, finally, he had sent Jubilee Jim on the long journey, after thoroughly schooling the old man on the part he was to play. By him he had sent a letter to his man of business, with minute instructions which would enable his affairs to be put in order, another to his bank directing the sale of certain securities for cash to be held at his instant demand, a third to Suzuki, his Japanese valet, instructing him to send clothes, and other needful articles, his private papers and a few books—for solace in this solitude until he should have determined what to do.
"Good, Jube!" said Harry, as the old negro came into the room carrying the big bundle from his little cart. "You got everything, then?"
"Yas, Marse Harry. Ah brung dem all—dee papers, en dee close, en dee money f'um dee bank, en all. Moughty glad ah got dis 'yer ole dawg erlong, wid sech er heap o' money on me! Reck'n Ah spent er lot—had tuh pay er qua'tah bof ways fo' him tuh ride on dee baggage-cyah: wouldn't let him in dee smokah nohow. Dey argyfied he too big."
Harry spread out the clothing on the table—suits of fashionable cut, speaking loudly and insistently of the old life. Those he wore at the moment had once been modish too, but their one-time owner would no longer have recognised them, for they were threadbare and as battered as the home-made moccasins on Harry's feet. At the first opportunity he purposed anonymously to send John Stark double their value, with certain articles the garments had contained—watch, cigarette-case, cuff-links and what-not—now wrapped in a little package in a safe hiding-place.