Again she nodded, pressing her brow upward against his chin in a mute action of consolation and sympathy.
He sighed. “I didn't think anybody knew that,” he said. “That is, anybody up here.”
“Mr. Mayhew went down and saw your uncle,” Cynthia found voice to say, finally.
“Don't call him my uncle—he's not that, except as hell gives men relatives. But I don't want to speak of him. The memory of his ashy face, glittering eyes, and triumphant tone as he hurled those facts at me is like a horrible nightmare. I'm not here to deny a thing, little girl. I came to let you see me just as I am. I fell very low. No one knows I'm here. I passed through Darley without meeting a soul I knew and walked all the way here, dodging off the road when I heard the sound of hoofs or wheels. I've come to you, Cynthia—only you. You are the only one out of this part of my life that I ever want to see again. I am not going to hide anything. After that revelation in Atlanta I sank as low as a brute. I drank and lost my head. I spent several days in New Orleans more like a demon than a human being—among gamblers, thieves, and cutthroats. Two of my companions confessed to me that they were escaped convicts put in for murder. I went on to Havana and came back again to New Orleans. Yesterday I reached Atlanta. I learned that the police had been trying to find me, and hid out. Last night, Cynthia, I was drunk again; but this morning I woke up with a longing to throw it all off, to be a man once more, and while I was thinking about it a thought came to me like a flash of light from heaven thrown clear across the black waste of hell. The thought came to me that, although I am a nobody (that name has never passed my lips since I learned it was not my own)—the thought came to me, I say, that there was one single and only chance for me to return to manhood and obtain earthly happiness. Do you follow me, dearest?”
She raised her head and looked into his great, staring eyes.
“Not quite, Nelson,” she said, softly. “Not quite.”
“You see, I recalled that you, too, are not happy here at home, and, as in my case, through no fault of your own—no fault, except being born different from others around you. I remembered all you'd told me about your mother's suspicious, exacting nature, and how hard you worked at home, and how little real joy you got out of life, and then it came to me that we both had as much right to happiness as any one else—you for your hard life and I for all that I'd suffered. So I stopped drinking. I have not touched a drop to-day, although a doctor down there said I really needed a stimulant. You can see how nervous I am. I shake all over. But I am stimulated by hope—that's it, Cynthia—hope! I've come to tell you that you can make a man of me—that you have it in your power to blot out all my trouble.”
“I don't see how, Nelson.” Cynthia raised her head and looked into his shadowy face wonderingly.
“I've come here to ask you to leave this spot with me forever. I've got unlimited means. Even since I've been away my iron lands in Alabama and coal lands in Tennessee have sprung up marvellously in value. This business here at the store is a mere trifle compared to other investments of mine. We could go far away where no one knows of my misfortune, and, hand-in-hand, make us a new home and new friends. Oh, Cynthia, that holds out such dazzling promise to me that, honestly, all the other fades away in contrast to it. Just to think, you'll be all mine, all mine—alone with me in the wide, wide world! I have no legal name to give you, it's true, but”—he laughed harshly—“we could put our heads together and pick a pretty one, and call ourselves by it. I once knew a man who was a foundling, and because they picked him up early in the morning he was called 'Early.' That wouldn't sound bad, would it? Mr. and Mrs. Early, from nowhere, but nice, good people. What do you say, little girl? It all rests with you now. You are to decide whether I rise or sink back again, for God knows I don't see how I could possibly give you up. I have not acted right with you all along in not declaring my love sooner, but I hardly knew my mind. It was not till that night at the mill that I began to realize how dear you were to me, but it was such a wonderful awakening that I did not speak of it as I should. But why don't you say something, Cynthia? Surely you don't love any one else—”
She drew herself quite from his embrace, but, still clasping one of his hands like an eager child, she said: