The Destroying Angel

"I've told you I don't feel – well – exactly light-hearted this morning."

There was a little silence. She watched him askance with her fugitive, shadowy, sympathetic and shrewd smile.

"Must I make talk, then?" she demanded at length.

"If we must, I suppose – you'll have to show the way. My mind's hardly equal to trail-breaking to-day."

"So I shall, then. Hugh…" She leaned toward him, dropping her hand over his own with an effect of infinite comprehension. "Hugh," she repeated, meeting his gaze squarely as he looked up, startled – "what's the good of keeping up the make-believe? You know!"

The breath clicked in his throat, and his glance wavered uneasily, then steadied again to hers. And through a long moment neither stirred, but sat so, eye to eye, searching each the other's mind and heart.

At length he confessed it with an uncertain, shamefaced nod.

"That's right," he said: "I do know – now."

She removed her hand and sat back without lessening the fixity of her regard.

"When did you find it out?"

"This morning. That is, it came to me all of a sudden – " His gaze fell; he stammered and felt his face burning.

"Hugh, that's not quite honest. I know you hadn't guessed, last night – I know it. How did you come to find it out this morning? Tell me!"

He persisted, as unconvincing as an unimaginative child trying to explain away a mischief:

"It was just a little while ago. I was thinking things over – "

"Hugh!"

He shrugged sulkily.

"Hugh, look at me!"

Unwillingly he met her eyes.

"How did you find out?"

He was an inexpert liar. Under the witchery of her eyes, his resource failed him absolutely. He started to repeat, stammered, fell still, and then in a breath capitulated.

"Before you were up – I meant to keep this from you – down there on the beach – I found Drummond."

"Drummond!"

It was a cry of terror. She started back from him, eyes wide, cheeks whitening.

"I'm sorry… But I presume you ought to know… His body … I buried it…"

She gave a little smothered cry, and seemed to shrink in upon herself, burying her face in her hands – an incongruous, huddled shape of grief, there upon the gray stone wall, set against all the radiant beauty of the exquisite, sun-gladdened world.

He was patient with her, though the slow-dragging minutes during which she neither moved nor made any sound brought him inexpressible distress, and he seemed to age visibly, his face, settling in iron lines, gray with suffering.

At length a moan – rather, a wail – came from the stricken figure beside him:

"Ah, the pity of it! the pity of it!.. What have I done that this should come to me!"

He ventured to touch her hand in gentle sympathy.

"Mary," he said, and hesitated with a little wonder, remembering that this was the first time he had ever called her by that name – "Mary, did you care for him so much?"

She sat, mute, her face averted and hidden.

"I'd give everything if I could have mended matters. I was fond of Drummond – poor soul! If he'd only been frank with me from the start, all this could have been avoided. As soon as I knew – that night when I recognized you on the stage – I went at once to you to say I would clear out – not stand in the way of your happiness. I would have said as much to him, but he gave me no chance."

"Don't blame him," she said softly. "He wasn't responsible."

"I know."

"How long have you known?" She swung suddenly to face him.

"For some time – definitely, for two or three days. He tried twice to murder me. The first time he must have thought he'd done it… Then he tried again, the night before you were carried off. Ember suspected, watched for him, and caught him. He took him away, meaning to put him in a sanitarium. I don't understand how he got away – from Ember. It worries me – on Ember's account. I hope nothing has happened to him."

"Oh, I hope not!"

"You knew – I mean about the cause – the morphine?"

"I never guessed until that night. Then, as soon as I got over the first awful shock, I realized he was a madman. He talked incoherently – raved – shouted – threatened me with horrible things. I can't speak of them. Later, he quieted down a little, but that was after he had come down into the cabin to – to drug himself… It was very terrible – that tiny, pitching cabin, with the swinging, smoking lamp, and the madman sitting there, muttering to himself over the glass in which the morphine was dissolving… It happened three times before the wreck; I thought I should go out of my own mind."

She shuddered, her face tragic and pitiful.

"Poor girl!" he murmured inadequately.

"And that – that was why you were searching the beach so closely!"

"Yes – for the other fellow. I – didn't find him."

A moment later she said thoughtfully: "It was the man you saw watching me on the beach, I think."

"I assumed as much. Drummond had a lot of money, I fancy – enough to hire a desperate man to do almost anything… The wages of sin – "

"Don't!" she begged. "Don't make me think of that!"

"Forgive me," he said.

For a little she sat, head bowed, brooding.

"Hugh!" she cried, looking up to search his face narrowly – "Hugh, you've not been pretending – ?"

"Pretending?" he repeated, thick-witted.