She sat on a stool beside his chair, passing up the photographs for his scrutiny. With each she had a word of comment, but Burton looked at them mechanically. They were nothing to him but strange faces, in which he felt only a reflected interest. At length she raised a photograph which she held a moment longer than usual. “This,” she said, “is a picture of my particular college chum—my best girl friend. She is pure gold.”
She placed the pasteboard in his fingers. His eyes wandered to the face, and then his head shot forward as though he had been magnetised. He instantly attempted to recover his composure, but his fingers trembled and his breath came hard. It was the face of Myrtle Vane!
[CHAPTER XVII—THE HOMESTEAD LINE]
| “Where’er Endeavour bares her arm, And grapples with the Things To Be, At desk or counter, forge or farm, On veldt or prairie, land or sea, And men press onward, undismayed, The Empire Builder plies his trade.” The Empire Builders. |
What explanation Burton made of his agitation he never quite remembered. He knew he had said something about a remarkable likeness to a friend of his, but he felt that his behaviour at best had had only a lame excuse. Kate, however, had accepted it with the frankness that had marked her attitude toward him since the day they first met, and had rattled on her tribute to Myrtle Vane, to every word of which Burton inwardly said amen. But when she mentioned that they still corresponded regularly, and that she expected a letter by the next mail, he found himself battling with conflicting emotions. It was plain that he must tell her all or nothing; either he must take her into his life or he must go out of hers. He knew that he loomed big in the world of this farmer’s daughter, and that when she next wrote to Myrtle she would tell about this Ray, her discovery. The name would excite Miss Vane’s interest, identification would surely come, sooner or later. And what would this girl from whom he had torn himself under the shadow of the law and who was in very reality more to him than existence itself—what would she say when she knew of his life as a fugitive from justice, a betrayer of his bondsman, whose regard for her had been so slight that he had deserted her under the fear of his own punishment—what would she say when she knew he had cast off all responsibility for the past and to-day was living in happiness, the trusted friend of her trusted friend? He saw his life crumbling about him like a house of cards. He saw only too plainly how his desertion of the girl he loved would cost him the friendship of the girl he so much admired.
Burton excused himself to Miss McKay as soon as he could. He walked to the stables, and, finding himself unobserved, plunged down into the deep gulley. Here he strode on and on, his mind at first in a turmoil of confusion. Gradually the exercise calmed his brain and he was able to think more clearly. And the clearer he saw his position the less he liked it. Two courses were possible; to disappear and try again to lose himself, probably by taking up a homestead far back from the centres of civilization; or to make a clean breast of the whole thing to Kate. But what would she think of him when she knew the truth? Suppose she believed in his innocence, of which he had every confidence, would her attitude change when she knew him to be a fugitive from the law—an innocent man who lacked the moral courage to prove his innocence or accept the inevitable? That afternoon he had felt that he could tell her all; that night he knew that he could tell her nothing.
And yet the idea of unexplained disappearance was unbearable to him. He felt that he owed it to his friends here, whose home had been such an oasis to him in his desert of bad fortune, to relieve their minds of any doubt as to his personal safety. He now remembered that this thought had not occurred to him when he fled from Plainville, and the blood slowly mounted to his forehead. But he would not repeat that cruelty; whatever came he would have an interview with Mr. McKay.
He returned to the house. The cowboys were still absent, and Kate, after searching for him in vain, had gone riding alone. He found Mr. McKay still on the kitchen porch, and floundered into his task.
“I have come, Mr. McKay, to tell you that I must leave here, at once. I have just heard—that is, I have just had information which makes it imperative that I leave without an hour’s delay. The heavy end of the harvest is over. I hope you will get along without trouble. Good-bye.”
“But, boy, hang it, there’s somethin’ wrong about this. Bad news?”