"I've never had much to do with him personally. I'm glad of it. Perhaps there would have been enough of the cursed fascinating power about him to have ruined me too. Ruin! No, that's not the word, either. He did that anyhow. Made me his slave, or his tool, or his victim.
"You see Ned went from college into business, and might have done well if he had never met Endicott. And I went from business into love, and might have prospered if Endicott had not lived. There are some crimes that law don't avenge and some that it does. Endicott has tried his hand at both sorts, and the law, being weak, only punished him, or attempted to, for the latter. Very lightly it laid it on him, too."
"Mebbe it hit him harder than you think fur," interpolated Blaze. "It's no fun gittin' inter them clutches. But go on."
"Perhaps it did. I don't believe I ever thought of that before. Ned and mother and I were wrapped up in each other. It's not often, I think, that you find a family like ours was. There had never been a difference of opinion or a single jar; but every thing went on smoothly. Ned was the pet. He was the youngest and the frailest, and when I was away at college he was left alone with mother. It never made me jealous a bit because, somehow, it seemed natural. When I came home I petted him too. We weren't rich exactly; but we had some money, and by a little care had managed to live almost as though we were. Perhaps if we had felt poverty we might have been happier. But, we had a taste of the luxurious, and I'm afraid it gave and fed a desire for means more ample. Ned, at least, got possessed with a yearning to be wealthy; and I was in haste myself to realize some of my dreams. I'm not going to trouble you with a complete family history, or tell how he and I, in our different spheres, toiled ahead, with fair prospects, for several years.
"One day I saw Edith Van Payne; and the picture she marked in my brain just then has never faded since. Some men speak of being able by shutting their eyes to bring up the scenes of long ago;—but, shut or open, it's always there, I see her just the same. I can't imagine why a woman should have such an influence. It's strange, it's even monstrous. After that day, as I looked for her, I saw her oftener. Eventually I came to know her. Then I found she was worth the studying. She was entirely different from any other woman I had ever met, for there were everlasting contradictions connected with her. She looked dashing and almost masculine, yet she really was intensely feminine; she seemed at first meeting to be beyond emotion, but, as I came to know her, she was extremely sensitive. She was one of those women externally stamped with all the marks of heartlessness, and yet have true, honest hearts all ready for the crushing. Perhaps I was slow with my wooing, yet I know I was wrapped up in it. I can not tell how much encouragement I, at first, received. As much, I guess, as I deserved. You see, she was almost alone in the world, and was making her own way as best she might. She had a younger brother, though I saw very little of him. After a bit Ned became acquainted with her. I introduced him myself. They soon became great friends, though their friendship never ripened into any thing like sentimentality. Their ages were too near for that. If any thing, she was a few months the older.
"How or when Ned first became mixed up with Endicott I do not know. In haste to become rich, he was open for speculation. I'm not certain that it was not through Miss Van Payne. She knew him, met him often, yet by some chance I never was introduced to him, never saw the three together. What do you suppose the result was? He murdered both! It all seemed to be done in an instant as it were. I was away from home for a fortnight, and when I came back it was over. Ned he killed; that I might have borne, but, until a few days ago, I thought he had killed the woman too.
"Mother had noticed a change in the boy. For two or three days she would not see him; then he would come home taciturn and upset. At that time she could only guess that his business affairs were going wrong. Afterward I found how far out he had been led by this Endicott, who, all the time feathering his own nest well, was dragging him to the quicksands of financial rottenness.
"What you have told me of the conversation you overheard throws some light on his course with Edith, though that I have not yet been able to fully comprehend. It seems he would have married her and dared not, even if he could. Preferring, then, the roundabout way of a schemer to the straightforwardness of an honest man, he attempted to establish an ownership in her. Curse him, he deliberately set about compromising her! She could take good care of herself, and he knew it, but he blackened her reputation simply and solely to give himself time, hoping to conceal his own part in the matter and eventually to smooth the affair over. Had he known the woman as I did, he never would have attempted it, since he succeeded too well.
"The crisis came during my absence. Carefully as he covered the traces of his agency, Ned detected his share in the work. At first, to be sure, there was only a faint suspicion; but, that soon ripened into a certainty. Knowing my hopes and wishes, brotherly love urged him to employ every means to learn the truth. Once engaged in this, he was led to suspect Endicott's business integrity, and the revelations brought about by an investigation in that direction were of themselves overpowering.
"Then he did either a foolish or an unfortunate thing. Just in the white heat he met Endicott. Remember, that he not only knew that this man had compromised, almost beyond redemption, the woman his brother loved; but that he himself was involved in a network of toils from which he could not hope to escape short of the loss of his means, and, worse still, with a damaged reputation. They met—and Endicott killed him.