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Page 38
He told her how much he "remembered," which was no more and no less
than he had learned from the letters and the clippings. The story did
not appeal to him as particularly unusual or dramatic. He had passed
through too many tragic happenings in the last four years to regard it
in that way. It was simply an unfortunate affair beginning in
misfortune, and with its necessary whirlwind of hurt and sorrow. The
one thing of shame he would not keep out of his mind was that he,
Derwent Conniston, must have been a poor type of big brother in those
days of nine or ten years ago, even though little Mary Josephine had
worshiped him. He was well along in his twenties then. The Connistons
of Darlington were his uncle and aunt, and his uncle was a more or less
prominent figure in ship-building interests on the Clyde. With these
people the three--himself, Mary Josephine, and his brother Egbert--had
lived, "farmed out" to a hard-necked, flinty-hearted pair of relatives
because of a brother's stipulation and a certain English law. With them
they had existed in mutual discontent and dislike. Derwent, when he
became old enough, had stepped over the traces. All this Keith had
gathered from the letters, but there was a great deal that was missing.
Egbert, he gathered, must have been a scapegrace. He was a cripple of
some sort and seven or eight years his junior. In the letters Mary
Josephine had spoken of him as "poor Egbert," pitying instead of
condemning him, though it was Egbert who had brought tragedy and
separation upon them. One night Egbert had broken open the Conniston
safe and in the darkness had had a fight and a narrow escape from his
uncle, who laid the crime upon Derwent. And Derwent, in whom Egbert
must have confided, had fled to America that the cripple might be
saved, with the promise that some day he would send for Mary Josephine.
He was followed by the uncle's threat that if he ever returned to
England, he would be jailed. Not long afterward "poor Egbert" was found
dead in bed, fearfully contorted. Keith guessed there had been
something mentally as well as physically wrong with him.
"--And I was going to send for you," he said, as they came to the level
of the valley. "My plans were made, and I was going to send for you,
when this came."
He stopped, and in a few tense, breathless moments Mary Josephine read
the ninth and last letter he had taken from the Englishman's chest. It
was from her uncle. In a dozen lines it stated that she, Mary
Josephine, was dead, and it reiterated the threat against Derwent
Conniston should he ever dare to return to England.
A choking cry came to her lips. "And that--THAT was it?"
"Yes, that--and the hurt in my head," he said, remembering the part he
must play. "They came at about the same time, and the two of them must
have put the grain of sand in my brain."
It was hard to lie now, looking straight into her face that had gone
suddenly white, and with her wonderful eyes burning deep into his soul.
She did not seem, for an instant, to hear his voice or sense his words.
"I understand now," she was saying, the letter crumpling in her
fingers. "I was sick for almost a year, Derry. They thought I was going
to die. He must have written it then, and they destroyed my letters to
you, and when I was better they told me you were dead, and then I
didn't write any more. And I wanted to die. And then, almost a year
ago, Colonel Reppington came to me, and his dear old voice was so
excited that it trembled, and he told me that he believed you were
alive. A friend of his had just returned from British Columbia, and
this friend told him that three years before, while on a grizzly
shooting trip, he had met a man named Conniston, an Englishman. We
wrote a hundred letters up there and found the man, Jack Otto, who was
in the mountains with you, and then I knew you were alive. But we
couldn't find you after that, and so I came--"
He would have wagered that she was going to cry, but she fought the
tears back, smiling.
"And--and I've found you!" she finished triumphantly.
She snuggled close to him, and he slipped an arm about her waist, and
they walked on. She told him about her arrival in Halifax, how Colonel
Reppington had given her letters to nice people in Montreal and
Winnipeg, and how it happened one day that she found his name in one of
the Mounted Police blue books, and after that came on as fast as she
could to surprise him at Prince Albert. When she came to that point,
Keith pointed once more into the west and said:
"And there is our new world. Let us forget the old. Shall we, Mary
Josephine?"
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