At Large

"She didn't, didn't she? Why, of course you ought to know best, even if you don't; but if you asked me, I should say maybe she isn't a hundred miles from you at this very instant!"

"Speak that lie again," cried Miles, his low voice now fairly quivering with passion and terror, "and I strike you dead where you stand! She is in Australia, and you know it!"

Jem Pound stepped two paces backward, and answered in a loud, harsh tone:

"You fool! she is here!"

Miles stepped forward as if to carry out his threat; but even as he moved he heard a rustle at his side, and felt a light hand laid on his arm. He started, turned, and looked round. There, by his side – poverty-stricken almost to rags, yet dark and comely as the summer's night – stood the woman whom years ago he had made his wife!

A low voice full of tears whispered his name: "Ned, Ned!" and "Ned, Ned!" again and again.

He made no answer, but stood like a granite pillar, staring at her. She pressed his arm with one hand, and laid the other caressingly on his breast; and as she stood thus, gazing up through a mist into his stern, cold face, this topmost hand rested heavily upon him. To him it seemed like lead; until suddenly – did it press a bruise or a wound, that such a hideous spasm should cross his face? that he should shake off the woman so savagely?

By the merest accident, the touch of one woman had conjured the vision of another; he saw before him two, not one; two as opposite in their impressions on the senses as the flower and the weed; as separate in their associations as the angels of light and darkness.

Yet this poor woman, the wife, could only creep near him again – forgetting her repulse, since he was calm the next moment – and press his hand to her lips, so humbly that now he stood and bore it, and repeat brokenly:

"I have found him! Oh, thank God! Now at last I have found him!"

While husband and wife stood thus, silenced – one by love, the other by sensations of a very different kind – the third person watched them with an expression which slowly changed from blank surprise to mortification and dumb rage. At last he seemed unable to stand it any longer, for he sprang forward and whispered hoarsely in the woman's ear:

"What are you doing? Are you mad? What are we here for? What have we crossed the sea for? Get to work, you fool, or – "

"To work to bleed me, between you!" cried Ned Ryan, shaking himself again clear of the woman. "By heaven, you shall find me a stone!"

Elizabeth Ryan turned and faced her ally, and waved him back with a commanding gesture.

"No, Jem Pound," said she, in a voice as clear and true as a clarion, "it is time to tell the truth: I did not come to England for that! O Ned, Ned! I have used this man as my tool – can't you see? – to bring me to you. Ned, my husband, I am by your side; have you no word of welcome?"

She clung to him, with supplication in her white face and drooping, nerveless figure; and Pound looked on speechless. So he had been fooled by this smooth-tongued, fair-faced trash; and all his plans and schemes, and hungry longings and golden expectations, were to crumble into dust before treachery such as this! So, after all, he had been but a dupe – a ladder to be used and kicked aside! A burning desire came over him to plunge his knife into this false demon's heart, and end all.

But Ryan pushed back his wife a third time, gently but very firmly.

"Come, Liz," said he, coldly enough, yet with the edge off his voice and manner, "don't give us any of this. This was all over between us long ago. If it's money you want, name a sum; though I have little enough, you shall have what I can spare, for I swear to you I got away with my life and little else. But if it's sentiment, why, it's nonsense; and you know that well enough."

Elizabeth Ryan stood as one stabbed, who must fall the moment the blade is withdrawn from the wound; which office was promptly performed by one who missed few opportunities.

"Why, of course!" exclaimed Pound, with affected sympathy with the wife and indignation against the husband. "To be sure you see how the wind lies, missis?"

"What do you mean?" cried Elizabeth Ryan fiercely.

"Can't you see?" pursued Pound in the same tone, adding a strong dash of vulgar familiarity; "can't you see that you're out of the running, Liz, my lass? You may be Mrs. Ryan, but Mrs. Ryan is a widow; there's no Ned Ryan now. There's a Mr. Miles, an Australian gentleman, in his skin, and, mark me, there'll be a Mrs. – "

He stopped, for Liz Ryan turned on him so fiercely that it looked as though she was gathering herself to spring at his throat.

"You liar!" she shrieked. "Tell him, Ned! Give him the lie yourself! Quickly – speak, or I shall go mad!"

Her husband uttered no sound.

"He can't, you see," sneered Pound. "Why, if you'd only come in with me into the garden, you'd have seen the two together sweethearting in the starlight!"

"If I had," said Mrs. Ryan, trembling violently, "I pity both. But no, I don't believe it! O Ned! Ned! answer, unless you want to break my heart!"

"Well, well, what does it matter?" put in Pound hastily, speaking to her in a fatherly, protective tone, which hit the mark aimed at. "Liz, my dear, you and I have been good friends all this time; then why not let him go his ways? – after we've got our rights, I mean."

Ned Ryan glanced sharply from his wife to the man who had brought her from Australia; and then he spoke:

"My good woman, why not be frank? What's the use of acting a part to me? Anyway, it's a bit too thin this time. Only let me alone, and you two can go on – as you are. Come now, I don't think I'm hard on you; considering everything I might be a deal harder."

His wife sprang before him, her black eyes flashing, her whole frame quivering.

"Edward Ryan, you shall answer for these foul, cruel words before Him who knows them to be false. What do you think me, I wonder? That vile thing there – can't you see how I have used him? – he has been the bridge between me and you, yet you make him the barrier! Oh, you know me better than that, Ned Ryan! You know me for the woman who sacrificed all for you – who stood by you through thick and thin, and good and bad, while you would let her – who would not have forsaken you for twenty murders! – who loved you better than life – God help me!" cried the poor woman, wildly, "for I love you still!"

She rose the next moment, and continued in a low, hard, changed voice:

"But love and hate lie close together; take care, and do not make me hate you, for if you do I shall be pitiless as I have been pitiful, cruel as I have been fond. I, who have been ready all these years to shield you with my life – I shall be the first to betray you to the laws you have cheated, if you turn my love to hate. Ned! Ned! stop and think before it is too late!"

She pressed both hands upon her heart, as if to stay by main force its tumultuous beating. Her limbs tottered beneath her. Her face was like death. Her life's blood might have mingled with the torrent of her eloquence!

"You are beside yourself," said her husband, who had listened like a stone; "otherwise you would remember that tall talk never yet answered with me. And yet – yet I am sorry for you – so poor, so ragged, so thin – " His voice suddenly softened, and he felt with his hand in his pocket. "See here! take these twenty pounds. It's a big lump of all I have; but 'twill buy you a new dress and some good food, and make you decent for a bit, and if I had more to spare, upon my soul you should have it!"

Elizabeth Ryan snatched the notes from her husband's hand, crumpled them savagely, and flung them at his feet; with a wild sweep of her arm she tore off her bonnet, as though it nursed the fire within her brain, and coils of dark, disordered hair fell down about her shoulders. For one moment she stood glaring fixedly at her husband, and then fell heavily to the ground.

"She has fainted," said Miles, not without pity, and bending over her. "Bring her to, then lead her away. Take her back; she must not see me again."

Pound knelt down, and quietly pocketed the crumpled notes; then he raised the senseless head and fanned the ashy face, looking up meanwhile and saying:

"Meet me here to-morrow night at ten; I will come alone."

"For the last time, then."

"I am agreeable; but it will rest with you."

Miles drew away into the shadows. He waited, and presently he heard a faint, hollow, passionate voice calling his name:

"Ned Ryan! I will come back, Ned Ryan! Come back, never fear, and see you – see you alone! And if you are as hard then – as hard and cruel – Heaven help us both! – Heaven help us both!"

When Ned Ryan, alias Sundown, alias Miles, heard the footsteps fail in the distance and die on the still night air, a rapid change came over his face and bearing. Throughout the night he had lost his self-command seldom; his nerve never. But now the pallor of a corpse made his features ghastly, and a cold sweat burst forth in great beads upon his forehead. His limbs trembled, and he staggered.

By a violent effort he steadied his brain and straightened his body. In a few minutes he had well-nigh regained his normal calm. Then gradually his chest expanded, and his air became that of one who has climbed through desperate peril to the lofty heights and sweet breath of freedom. Nay, as he stood there, gazing hopefully skyward, with the dim light upon his strong handsome face, he might very well have been mistaken for a good man filled with dauntless ambition, borne aloft on the wings of noble yearning.

"After all, I am not lost!" The thoughts escaped in words from the fulness of his soul. "No, I am safe; he dares not betray me; she will not – because she loves me. Not another soul need ever know."

A new voice broke upon his ear:

"You are wrong; I know!"

His lowered gaze fell upon the motionless figure of Dick Edmonstone, who was standing quietly in front of him.