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Page 25
Again he obeyed. He was big for the stool.
"You are glad to see me, aren't you, Derry?"
She was leaning over the edge of the big chair, and one of her hands
went to his damp hair, brushing it back. It was a wonderful touch. He
had never felt anything like it before in his life, and involuntarily
he bent his head a little. In a moment she had hugged it up close to
her.
"You ARE glad, aren't you, Derry? Say 'yes.'"
"Yes," he whispered.
He could feel the swift, excited beating of her heart.
"And I'm never going back again--to THEM," he heard her say, something
suddenly low and fierce in her voice. "NEVER! I'm going to stay with
you always, Derry. Always!"
She put her lips close to his ear and whispered mysteriously. "They
don't know where I am. Maybe they think I'm dead. But Colonel
Reppington knows. I told him I was coming if I had to walk round the
world to get here. He said he'd keep my secret, and gave me letters to
some awfully nice people over here. I've been over six months. And when
I saw your name in one of those dry-looking, blue-covered, paper books
the Mounted Police get out, I just dropped down on my knees and thanked
the good Lord, Derry. I knew I'd find you somewhere--sometime. I
haven't slept two winks since leaving Montreal! And I guess I really
frightened that big man with the terrible mustaches, for when I rushed
in on him tonight, dripping wet, and said, 'I'm Miss Mary Josephine
Conniston, and I want my brother,' his eyes grew bigger and bigger
until I thought they were surely going to pop out at me. And then he
swore. He said, 'My Gawd, I didn't know he had a sister!'"
Keith's heart was choking him. So this wonderful little creature was
Derwent Conniston's sister! And she was claiming him. She thought he
was her brother!
"--And I love him because he treated me so nicely," she was saying. "He
really hugged me, Derry. I guess he didn't think I was away past
eighteen. And he wrapped me up in a big oilskin, and we came up here.
And--O Derry, Derry--why did you do it? Why didn't you let me know?
Don't you--want me here?"
He heard, but his mind had swept beyond her to the little cabin in the
edge of the Great Barren where Derwent Conniston lay dead. He heard the
wind moaning, as it had moaned that night the Englishman died, and he
saw again that last and unspoken yearning in Conniston's eyes. And he
knew now why Conniston's face had followed him through the gray gloom
and why he had felt the mysterious presence of him long after he had
gone. Something that was Conniston entered into him now. In the
throbbing chaos of his brain a voice was whispering, "She is yours, she
is yours."
His arms tightened about her, and a voice that was not unlike John
Keith's voice said: "Yes, I want you! I want you!"
X
For a space Keith did not raise his head. The girl's arms were about
him close, and he could feel the warm pressure of her cheek against his
hair. The realization of his crime was already weighing his soul like a
piece of lead, yet out of that soul had come the cry, "I want you--I
want you!" and it still beat with the voice of that immeasurable
yearning even as his lips grew tight and he saw himself the monstrous
fraud he was. This strange little, wonderful creature had come to him
from out of a dead world, and her lips, and her arms, and the soft
caress of her hands had sent his own world reeling about his head so
swiftly that he had been drawn into a maelstrom to which he could find
no bottom. Before McDowell she had claimed him. And before McDowell he
had accepted her. He had lived the great lie as he had strengthened
himself to live it, but success was no longer a triumph. There rushed
into his brain like a consuming flame the desire to confess the truth,
to tell this girl whose arms were about him that he was not Derwent
Conniston, her brother, but John Keith, the murderer. Something drove
it back, something that was still more potent, more demanding, the
overwhelming urge of that fighting force in every man which calls for
self-preservation.
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