CHAPTER XXII
HARRY DECIDES
The steel handcuff bit more hardly into Harry's wrist, but he did not feel it. His eyes were fixed and his face had grown grey. The accusation, with all its shuddering implications, had surged over him like the assurance of the unescapable end, the last engulfing wave of hopeless finality which, in its subsidence, left him cold and still. Malice and hatred had closed the door of hope.
His sacrifice had gone for nothing. He could not save Echo. The matter had been taken from his hands. She must be involved. If murder had been done, her passionate denial in his defence would no doubt suffice to save him—he knew his southern juries!—but at what a price to her would be his salvation! For though sufficient doubt would be insinuated to legally acquit him, in the eyes of their world harrowing suspicions must always cling to her. Collusion between her and himself, her lover, to secure compromising letters, a guilty understanding embracing possible murder! A midnight rendezvous with one lover, converted into swift tragedy by the vengeful pursuit of the other! So the speculations would run, and the baleful whispers would follow her all her life. What matter though she married him? Would love make up for that?
It was the Harry Sevier of remorseless logic, of clear thinking and rigid analysis, who reasoned now.
A tall old clock stood at the turn of the echoing stair and as he descended between his two uniformed attendants, grimly watchful of his every movement, he noted mechanically that it was two o'clock. It came to him with a chill and awed amazement how much might happen within one round of the clock. When those hands had last pointed to two o'clock he had stood in his office, a man of reputation and newly-ordered life, with all his heart beating to love; now he was disgraced, the woman he loved about to know the shame and hideous notoriety of scandal, both of them to be pilloried together as principals in another of those horrifying revelations of double-life which at periodic intervals shock a community's decorum!
It was not for himself he was thinking first. His pain for Echo swallowed up his own. As he sat in the cab between his guardians, bound for the station-house and the police interrogatory that should fling abroad its sensation in the morning's papers, his composure crumbled. He bent and put his cold face in his colder hands. His lips moved voicelessly.
"Echo ... Echo!" he whispered. "You have had my love, you have it now. You could have my life, if I could give it—every day, every drop of my blood, would not be enough to pay the price of what you must bear! But it is out of my power. I thought I could save you, my darling! But I can't.... I can't.... If I might only suffer alone, and you never know!"
He lifted his head with a start. A thought had darted to his mind like an impinging ray of light. Why should she ever know? Why should any one know—if Craig died? Only Craig who had known him in the past, had recognised him as Harry Sevier. Perhaps that was the greatest risk he should have to run. He could take refuge in silence, tell nothing, explain nothing. She would not know that the real shooter had not been taken. Could he maintain under the searching purview of the law that anonymity which he had sought to insure during the debauch into which he had so avidly plunged yesterday afternoon? Why not? He had so adjusted his home affairs, luckily, that a long time—perhaps many months—would elapse before his absence would be narrowly questioned. He was now in a city where he was not known: hundreds of miles of steel rails lay between him and the crowds to whom he was a familiar figure. His dark beard—so distinguishing a feature—was gone. He had discarded the characteristic gold-rimmed eye-glasses. Not an article of clothing he wore bore his name. His present face might be flung on printed pages to the four winds, and who, even of those who had seen him day in and day out, would say, "It is Harry Sevier!"