CHAPTER XXIV
ON THE BRINK
ARE our lives mapped out for us, pre-ordained from the beginning, as most of us at times secretly believe—as many frankly aver to be their only creed? With Varge all things seemed to be set at naught, passed beyond control or effort of his, and it was as though fate plucked at his elbow and, when he turned, chuckled ironically in his face. He had done everything within his power, for her sake and his own, to escape from the consequences of this love that had come to him, and every step he had taken in the belief that it was leading them to lives utterly apart had, instead, been bringing them irrevocably nearer—until it had literally flung him from the sea upon the beach of this little fishing village on the coast of Maine, where, as though by the touch of some magician's hand, the image in his soul, embodied, full of glorious, throbbing, pulsing life, had risen up before him.
Was it a higher power than his, immutable of purpose, that had brought this to pass—was it meant that after all—but why dream, why torture himself like that? If temporarily a free man, the gulf between them was no less impassable than it had ever been; and even granting that it were, there still remained—herself. What thoughts of him, save those actuated by pity and her tender woman's sympathy, could ever have come to her? To care for him, to love him, to even think of him in that way—what wild, insane, pitiful folly was this that was possessing him?
A man who is lost in the woods, it is said, in his endeavour to find his way, walks in a circle; and so it was with Varge now—in a mental sense. He had come back to the same point he had left that afternoon when he had made his dash for liberty from the penitentiary—the same conditions, the same considerations faced him now as had faced him then—and the same conclusions must prevail—he could not stay—he must go on and on—somewhere,—it did not matter much now where—somewhere.
And yet a day or two—or three or four—what could it matter? They would be all he could ever hope to have, all that—but he was shielding himself behind her, putting risk upon her even now, leaning very heavily upon her, imposing on her generosity, her chivalry.
He straightened suddenly and stood up away from the rock against which he had been leaning. It was early evening and he was upon the beach. The sea in tumult still lashed and flung itself madly against the shore, but here, protected by a jutting ledge of rock at the foot of the pathway from the cliff, it was calm and sheltered compared with the open beach a few feet away, where the huge billows broke with such thunderous reverberations as to subdue the roar of the wind to but a plaintive note running through the wild harmony of Nature's war-song in a minor key.
An hour before she had come to the coast-guard station with a quaint, elderly little lady, her aunt, ostensibly to bring jellies and various delicacies for the invalided Jonah Sully, and professing, at least, great surprise to find the skipper of the Mary K. Jones sitting on the doorsteps discoursing volubly to a group of fishermen upon the incidents of the storm, and showing little evidence of the precarious condition he had been in the night before, except for a bandage that swathed the crown of his head and precluded the use of any other head-gear. "In an hour on the beach at the foot of the pathway, half a mile further along the cliff," Janet had found occasion to whisper to him quickly.
And now he was waiting for her.
She came presently, but he did not hear her until she was close behind him—he had been looking the other way, his eyes fastened intently on the path by which he himself had descended, and the slight sound of her steps in the sand had been drowned by the noise of the surf.
She held out both her hands in frank, unaffected greeting, as he turned to face her, but there was a strange shyness in her voice.
"I came by the beach," she said. "I thought it would be safer."
He caught her hands in his—and then he could only stand there and look at her and search her eyes. A little dark-cloaked figure she was, the hood drawn over her head, the wind blowing truant hairs of gold across her face. So small, so dainty, so trim, so fresh and pure and beautiful—dear God, to sweep her into his arms and hold her there, to have her arms creep around his neck, her head to find its place upon his shoulder—through all of life!
The blood swept in waving tides to her cheeks; her eyes, lowered, sought the ground, and she gently disengaged her hands.
He stood a little back from her then. A glint of the setting sun, through a break in the flying clouds, came from across the range of tossing waters and seemed to single him out, throwing into relief against the background of the cliffs the great strong figure, clothed in the dark shirt and belted trousers which the coast-guard men had furnished him. The loose flannel shirt, low at the neck with its turn-down collar, hid nothing of the splendid breadth of shoulder that seemed so proudly glad to poise the well-set, shapely head. The weeks in the woods had bronzed and tanned his face, the dark hair had lost its hideous shortness and was beginning to wave a little now—the beauty of clean-lived young manhood in all its rugged power was dominant in every feature.
His eyes; were on the surf—hers had lifted and were studying him. She had tried to picture him without the prison stripes—how little, how crudely she had succeeded!
With a quick intake of her breath, she spoke again, hurriedly now, as though brought suddenly to a realisation of the present.
"Oh," she said, "there is so much to say—and there is so little time."
"Time?" he echoed mechanically—and looked at her.
She nodded. "Yes. Let us go over there beyond those rocks"—pointing with her hand—"away from the path here. Some one is liable to come down at any time."
She started forward as she spoke, and Varge followed her. She sat down upon the sand, her back against a boulder; he took his place before her, full length upon the beach—she, facing the rolling surf; he, the line of cliffs that seemed to stretch away for miles on either hand.
"Time?" he said again.
"Yes," she said. "You must go away from here at once—to-night. I would have tried to warn you earlier, but I thought the rest you needed after last night was worth the risk of a little delay. I am expecting father. I came down here, you know, after the fire to spend a few weeks with my aunt, and he promised to take a little holiday himself while I was here."
"But he has not come yet?" Varge asked quietly.
"No; not yet—not that I know of," she answered. "He said he was coming to-day or to-morrow, but he did not know just when he could get away."
"The trains," said Varge, "what time do they arrive? The evening train—"
"There are no trains here," she interrupted quickly. "You have to drive nearly seven miles to the nearest station, and I do not know just when they arrive."
Varge allowed a handful of sand to trickle through his fingers before he spoke again.
"I have not thanked you for what you have done," he said finally, in a low voice. "Last night you had only to speak a word and I—I suppose there is a jail even in this little place?"
"They call it a lock-up here," she corrected, with a queer little catch in her voice.
"Yes," he said gravely. "And now you have taken the additional risk of coming to warn me. I had no right to force a further false position upon you—I should have gone—last night."
She put out her hand swiftly, impulsively, to rest upon his sleeve.
"You must not speak like that," she said, her lips quivering. "It—it hurts me. It is as though you—oh, I do not know quite how to say it—as though you admitted to yourself the possibility that I would, or could, have done anything else, when I am so very glad, so very thankful that I could do even this little thing. Oh, Varge, you speak of thanks, and I—what can I say to you?—my life. Doctor Kreelmar told me what you did—how brave you were and—"
"And did he tell you that he had to be kept by force from going for you himself?" Varge interposed, smiling at her and shaking his head. "You see, after all, it was only that I was a little the stronger."
"No," she said slowly. "No; he did not tell me that—dear old Doctor Kreelmar." Then, looking straight at Varge: "But should that make me any the less—the less grateful to you?"
"I have taken unfair advantage of it," he said, evading her question. "I had no right to force to-day upon you. Yes; I should have gone last night, but I"—he hesitated—"I couldn't, I—"
He paused again, and his face went suddenly white, as, their eyes meeting, he seemed to read a quick, startled understanding in hers—then her head bent forward over her lap and only the top of the dark hood showed. His heart was pounding, throbbing wildly—that strange shyness in her voice when first she had spoken, that flood of colour to her face on the beach last night, her eyes but an instant since! Was it but his longing, his utter yearning, that tempted him to wild 
THERE SEEMED SOMETHING AKIN TO STORM TOSSED SEA.
He rose to his feet, walked abruptly a few yards away, and stood facing the sea. The wind was grateful, whipping his fevered brow; there seemed something akin in the storm-tossed sea to the tempest raging in his own soul. His lips moved for a moment silently; then he turned, went back, and stood before her. She was still seated as he had left her—as though she had not moved.
"I am a convicted murderer"—the words came from him with cold, deliberate steadiness, and it was as though he drew a line upon the sand at her feet between them, across which there was no passing—"I am under sentence for life; I am an escaped convict."
A little cry came from her, as quickly she gained her feet and stood there facing him, her hands clasped suddenly together. She seemed to shiver a little.
"Why—oh, why did you say that!" she faltered.
"Because," he answered monotonously, "sometimes I have dared to forget it—and I must not forget."
"You are an innocent man!" she cried, in a strained voice. "You deny it—but I know."
"You are very good," he said softly, but he did not look at her. High up above him on the cliff a figure stood suddenly silhouetted against the skyline. He dropped his eyes after an instant's glance that she might not notice that anything had attracted his attention.
She stepped to him quickly and raised her face to his.
"Is there nothing—nothing in all the world," she breathed in passionate earnestness, "no promise of happiness for the future, no single thing that the future might hold in store for you, no dream that might come true, that will make you speak, that—"
Grey to the lips, his face full of the agony he could not hide, he broke in hoarsely upon her words.
"Miss Rand, be merciful!"
"I am merciful," she said tensely. "Be merciful to yourself. I shall never try to make you speak again, but for this once—"
"You do not know what you are saying," he said desperately.
"—But for this once," she went on resolutely, "I must not let you put me off. It—it was one of the things I came for. I honour you for what I believe you have taken upon yourself—I think it was one of the finest acts a man has ever done—but it is terrible. It is for all your life. If you are not caught, you must always be a fugitive. See, I am pleading with you as if—as if I were fighting for my own happiness—for the last time."
"The last time?" he repeated numbly. He raised his eyes to the cliff again—the figure far above them was still silhouetted against the skyline.
"Yes; for the last time," she said after him. "I must go in a moment, and—and to-night you must leave here to—"
"It is true," said Varge—the figure on the skyline was moving back now, disappearing from view. The distance had made the recognition doubtful, would have made it impossible, in fact, if he had not been forewarned; but there was no doubt now, there was something too strikingly familiar in the stride and action of the short, broad-built form—it was Warden Rand. "It is true," he said again; "it is for the last time. I did not think when I sailed on the schooner from Gloucester for the Grand Banks that my voyage would end here—with you. I thought then that I had seen you for the last time—it, a thing like that, could never happen again."
"Then you will speak"—she was very close to him, her breath was on his cheek, her lips were trembling, her eyes, tear-dimmed, were raised to his.
Speak! Yes! Why not—and grasp at his chance for happiness! To stand a free man, his future before him, to work for her, to win her in the days to come! He had only to speak and let the coward soul he was shielding—no, it was not that—strange that for the moment he should have forgotten! It came to him now bringing peace, strengthening him, calming him—the gentle, patient face of Mrs. Merton, the silvery hair so smoothly parted beneath the old-lace cap, and the eyes of trust looked into his again now as they had looked through all his boyhood—and the dear lips smiled at him. He turned his head from Janet—and shook it silently.
Her voice broke. "It—it must always be—like this?"
It was a long time before he spoke.
"Always," he said—it was but a single word, low spoken, but it was his doom, his sentence self-pronounced.
She drew back from him, a smile struggling bravely for supremacy on the quivering lips.
"You will go—you must go to-night, at once—before father comes."
"I will go at once," he said.
"Good-bye," she whispered—and held out her hand. For a moment he held it in his own; then he bent his head and touched it with his lips.
"God guard and keep you and bring you happiness," he said, "through all your life."
He watched her go—watched long after the last flutter of her cloak was lost to view around a little headland of projecting rock far down the beach.
The last rays of the setting sun flung themselves athwart the heaving waters, making emerald valleys of wondrous hue betwixt the waves, tingeing the white, foaming, pearly crests with a crimson radiance. Then the light was gone, and it grew dark—chill, it seemed, and the boom of the surf was as a sullen dirge.
Slowly then Varge walked to the foot of the pathway leading to the cliff above, and slowly began to mount it.
He would go first to the coast-guard station and say good-bye—it would not do to risk suspicion by a sudden and unaccountable disappearance. The warden could not possibly have recognised him from the cliff—had not even seen, in all probability, that there was any one on the beach, for they had been almost entirely concealed from above behind the rock where they had been standing. Nor was the warden's presence on the cliff alarming—finding Janet out on his arrival, it was natural enough that he should stroll along the cliffs and watch the storm.
Almost at the top of the cliff the path swerved sharply to the left. Varge made the turn—and stopped dead in his tracks. Two men leaped from behind the rocks that had hidden them—and blocked the path behind him. Warden Rand rose from a stone on which he had been seated and came forward; four other men, men of the coast-guard, their captain amongst them, appeared as if by magic from behind other rocks and clustered about him. Seven to one! A grim smile in which was blended a strange apathy settled on Varge's lips as he faced the warden.
"I am sorry for this, Varge," Warden Rand said gravely. "I had rather it had been any other man than I to trap you. As it is, I have force enough here to make resistance, even from you, but an act of folly."
"I saw you from the beach," said Varge calmly; "but I did not think it was possible that you could recognise me at that distance."
"Nor would I," said the warden, "if I had not known that it was you. The man who drove me over from the station told me of the wreck of a schooner from Gloucester; his description of you aroused my suspicions; I went to the coast-guard station and talked with Captain Sully, and after that I was sure—he said that "Peters" was a stranger to him, but was a very strong man who had lifted unaided a cask weighing five or six hundred pounds from the wharf to the schooner's deck."
"It has grown heavier since yesterday morning," said Varge with a whimsical smile; then quietly: "They told you I had gone to the beach—I see. And now?"
Warden Rand motioned the men a little away.
"This will hurt my little girl," he said in a low, sober voice. "It hurts me—but it is my duty. She was with you below there—to warn you of my coming. I understand. I would not have had her do anything else; and I do not want her to know that I am aware she was trying to shield you, or aware that she even knew you were here. I want to keep the news of your capture from her for to-night at least if I can."
"Yes," said Varge—he swept his hand across his forehead quickly. "Yes; I understand."
"There is no train out to-night and I want you to go quietly with these men—and without me," said the warden. "They will put you in the town lock-up—to-morrow, of course, you will go back to Hebron."
"Very well," said Varge steadily, "I will go with them."
For another moment the warden stood there—and each looked into the other's eyes—then the warden, with an abrupt, hasty motion, beckoned to the men, and walked hurriedly away up the path.
"Tough luck, matey," said the captain of the coast-guard. "Blimy, if it ain't! Come on."