<h2><SPAN name="CHAPTER_XXVIII" id="CHAPTER_XXVIII"></SPAN>CHAPTER XXVIII</h2>
<h3>FIFTEEN MINUTES</h3>
<p>"There have never been but one of us since I came into this house."</p>
<p>Monstrous assertion! or so it seemed to Ransom as the whirl of his
thoughts settled and reason resumed its sway. Only one! But he had
himself seen two; so had Mrs. Deo and the maids; he could even relate the
differences between them on that first night. Yet had he ever seen them
together, or even the shadow of one at the same moment he saw the person
of the other? No, and with such an actress as she had shown herself to be
these last two days, such changes of appearance might be possible, though
why she should engage in such a deep, almost incredible plot was a
mystery to make the hair rise,—she, the tender, exquisite, the beloved
woman of his dreams.</p>
<p>She saw the maddening nature of his confusion and, springing to him, fell
on her knees with the imploring cry:</p>
<p>"Patience! Do not try to think—I will tell you. It can all be said in a
word. I was bound to this brother of mine, to do his bidding, to follow
his fortunes through life, and up to death, by promises and oaths to
which those uttered by me at the marriage altar were but toys and empty
air. Anitra, or the dream sister my misery took from the dead, was not
so bound, so I strove to secure our joy by the seeming death of Georgian
and a new life as her twin. You do not understand; you cannot. You have
no measure with which to gauge such men as my brother. But it will be
given you. There is no hope now. The weakness of a moment has undone us."</p>
<p>Ransom must have heard her, after events proved that he did, but he gave
no token of it. The visions that were whirling through his mind still
held it engrossed. He saw her, not as she stood before him now, trembling
and appealing, but as she had looked to him in the hall that first night,
as she had looked to him down by the mill-stream, as she had looked when
she told her story as Anitra, and later when she had faced the landlady
as Georgian, and the confusion of it all left no room in his conscience
for any other impression. But Mr. Harper, though surprised as he had
never been before in all his professional career, lost himself in no such
abyss. With the freedom which long-delayed insight into the truth gives
to a man of his positive nature and training, he left speculation and all
endeavor to reconcile events with her declaration, and plunged at once to
the obvious question of the moment.</p>
<p>Fixing his keen gaze on Hazen, he observed very quietly, but with an
underlying note of sarcasm:</p>
<p>"If this lady is your sister, Georgian Ransom, and there is no Anitra
save the fast fading memory of the child commemorated in your family's
monument, then your statement as to the body you saw under the ledge was
false?"</p>
<p>The answer came deliberately, unaffected both by the manner of the
accusation or by the accusation itself.</p>
<p>"Perfectly so," said he, "I saw no body. Perhaps my description would
have been less vivid if I had. My intention you know. This woman had
deceived me to the point of making me believe that she was indeed Anitra,
the twin, and not my millionaire sister, and Georgian's fortune being
necessary to her heir, I wished to cut short the law's delay by an
apparent identification. I never doubted from the moment this woman faced
with such well-played ignorance the mark of great meaning we had placed
upon her door, that Georgian was in the river, as you all believed. Why
then not give her a positive resting-place, since this would smooth out
all difficulties and hasten the very end for which she had apparently
sacrificed herself."</p>
<p>If there was any irony in his heart, his tongue did not show it. Indeed
his manner betrayed little. Immobility had again replaced all tokens of
anger, and immobility which only yielded now and then to a slight
contortion more expressive of physical pain than of mental agitation.
Yet in Georgian's eyes he had lost none of his formidable qualities, for
the dismay with which she followed his words grew as she listened, and
reached its height as he added in final explanation:</p>
<p>"The bag I did draw out of the pool, but only because I had taken it down
there in my blouse front. Did you think a man could see that or anything
else indeed in that maddening swirl of water?"</p>
<p>"But it was Mrs. Ransom's bag," came from Harper in ill-disguised
amazement. Even his sang-froid was leaving him before these evidences
of a plot so deep as to awaken awe. "Where did you get it? Not from Mrs.
Ransom herself? Her own surprise is warranty for that."</p>
<p>"No, I got it from the river, another reason why I credited her drowning.
It was fished up from the sand, a little way from the Fall. My man found
it; I had sent him there in a vain hope that he might find evidence of
the tragedy which others had overlooked. He did, but he told no one but
me. You flung the thing too far," he remarked to Georgian. "You should
have dropped it nearer the bank. Only such a prodder as my man Ives would
ever have discovered it."</p>
<p>Georgian shook her head, impatient at such banalities, in the face of the
important matters they had to discuss. "To the point," she cried, "tell
these men what will clear me of everything but a wild attempt at
freedom."</p>
<p>"I have said what I had to say," returned her brother.</p>
<p>Georgian's head fell. For a moment her courage seemed to fail her.</p>
<p>Mr. Harper rose and locked the door.</p>
<p>"We must have no intruders here," said he, pausing with a certain sense
of shock, as he noticed the faint smile, full of some sinister meaning,
which for an instant twisted Hazen's lips at these words.</p>
<p>But the delay was but momentary. With an odd sense of haste he rushed at
once to the attack.</p>
<p>Stepping in front of Hazen, he observed with force and unmistakable
resolution:</p>
<p>"Your devotion to the legatee Auchincloss cannot possibly be explained by
any ordinary feeling of obligation. Your sister has mentioned a Cause.
Can he by any possibility be the treasurer of that Cause?"</p>
<p>But Hazen was as impervious to direct attack as he had been to a covert
one.</p>
<p>"Georgian will tell you," said he. "When a woman looks as she looks now,
and is so given over to her own personal longings that she forgets the
most serious oaths, the most binding promises, nothing can hold back her
speech. She will talk, and since this must be, let her talk now and in
my presence. But let it be briefly," he admonished her, "and with
discretion. An unnecessary word will weigh heavily in the end. You know
in what scales. You shall have just fifteen minutes."</p>
<p>He looked about for a clock, but seeing none drew out his watch from his
vest pocket and laid it on the table. Then he settled himself again in
his chair, with a look and gesture of imperative command towards
Georgian.</p>
<p>Struck with dismay, she hesitated and he had time to add: "I shall not
interrupt unless you pass the bounds where narrative ends and disclosure
begins." And Harper and Ransom, glancing up at this, wondered at his
rigidity and the almost marble-like quiet into which his restless eye and
frenzied movements had now subsided.</p>
<p>Georgian seemed to wonder also, for she gave him a long and piercing look
before she spoke. But once she had begun her story, she forgot to look
anywhere but at the man whose forgiveness she sought and for the
restoration of whose sympathy she was unconsciously pleading.</p>
<p>Her first words settled one point which up to this moment had disturbed
Ransom greatly.</p>
<p>"You must forget Anitra's story. It was suggested by facts in my own
life, but it was not true of me or mine in any of its particulars.
Nor must you remember what the world knows, or what my relations say
about my life. The open facts tell little of my real history, which
from childhood to the day I believed my brother dead was indissolubly
bound up in his. Though our fathers were not the same and he has
old-world blood in his veins, while I am of full American stock, we loved
each other as dearly and shared each other's life as intimately as if the
bond between us had been one in blood as it was in taste and habit. This
was when we were both young. Later, a change came. Some old papers of his
father fell into his hands. A new vision of life,—sympathies quite
remote from those which had hitherto engrossed him, led him further and
further into strange ways and among strange companions. Ignorant of what
it all meant, but more alive than ever to his influence, I blindly
followed him, receiving his friends as my friends and subscribing to such
of their convictions as they thought wise to express before me. Another
year and he and I were living a life apart, owning no individual
existence but devoting brain, heart, all we had and all we were, to the
advancement and perpetuation of an idea. I have called this idea the
Cause. Let that name suffice. I can give you no other."</p>
<p>Pausing, she waited for some look of comprehension from the man she
sought to enlighten. But he was yet too dazed to respond to her mute
appeal, and she was forced to continue without it. Indicating Hazen with
a gesture, she said, with her eyes still fixed on those of her husband:</p>
<p>"You see him now as he came from under the harrow; but in those days—I
must speak of you as you were, Alfred—he was a man to draw all eyes and
win all hearts. Men loved him, women adored him. Little as he cared for
our sex, he had but to speak, for the coldest breast to heave, the most
indifferent eye to beam. I felt his power as strong as the rest, only
differently. No woman was more his slave than I, but it was a sister's
devotion I felt, a devotion capable of being supplanted by another. But I
did not know this. I thought him my whole world and let him engross me in
his plans and share his passions for subjects I did not even seek to
understand.</p>
<p>"I was only seventeen, he twenty-five. It was for him to think, not me.
And he did think but to my eternal undoing. The Cause needed a woman's
help, a woman's enthusiasm. Without considering my motherless condition,
my helplessness, the immaturity of my mind, he drew me day by day into
the secret meshes of his great scheme, a scheme which, as I failed to
understand till it had absorbed me, meant the unequivocal devotion of my
whole life to the exclusion of every other hope or purpose. Favored, he
called it, favored to stand for liberty, the advancement of men, the
right of every human being to an untrammeled existence. And favored I
thought myself, till one awful day when my brother, coming suddenly into
my room, found me making plans for an innocent pleasure and told me such
things were no longer for me, that a great and immortal duty awaited me,
one that had come sooner than he expected, but which my youth, beauty,
and spirit eminently fitted me to carry on to triumph.</p>
<p>"I was frightened. For the first time in my memory of him he looked like
his Italian father, the man we had all tried to forget. Once while
rummaging amongst my mother's treasures I had come across a miniature of
Signor Toritti. He was a handsome man but there was something terrible in
his eye; something to make the ordinary heart stand still. Alfred's
burned with the same meaning at this moment, and as I noted his manner,
which was elevated, almost godlike, I realized the difference in our
heredity and how natural to him were the sacrifices for which my mind and
temper were as naturally unprepared. With difficulty I asked him to
explain himself, and it was with terror that I listened when he did.
He may have been made to ask, but I was not made to hear such words. He
saw my inner rebellion and stopped in mid-harangue. He has never forgiven
me the disappointment of that moment. I have never forgiven him for
making me sign away my independence, my holdings, and my life to a Cause
I did not thoroughly understand."</p>
<p>"Your life?" echoed Ransom, roused to involuntary expression by this
word.</p>
<p>"Surely not your life," echoed the lawyer, with the slow credulity of the
matter-of-fact man.</p>
<p>"I have said it," she murmured, her head falling on her breast. At which
token of weakness, Hazen stirred and took the words from her mouth.</p>
<p>"The organization," said he, "is a secret one and its code is
self-sacrifice. To the band of noble men and women, of whose integrity
and far-reaching purpose you can judge little from the whinings of a
love-sick girl, life and all personal gratifications are as dust in the
balance against the preservation and advancement of universal happiness
and the great Cause. I thought my sister, young as she was, sufficiently
great-minded to comprehend this and sufficiently great-hearted to do the
society's bidding with joy at the sacrifice. But I found her lacking,
and—" He stopped and almost lost himself again, but roused and cried
with sudden fire, "Tell what I did, Georgian."</p>
<p>"You took my duty on yourself," she conceded, but coldly. "That was
brotherly; that was noble, if you had not exacted a vow from me in
return, destined to lay waste my whole life. Released from this one great
duty, I was to hold myself ready to fulfil all others. At the lift of a
hand—a finger—I was to leave whatever held me and go after the one who
beckoned in the name of the Cause. No circumstances were to be
considered; no other human duty or affection. If it were to enter upon a
fuller and more adventurous life, well and good; if it were to encounter
death and the cessation of all earthly things, that was well too, and a
good to be embraced with ardor. Obedience was all, and obedience at a
mere signal! I took the oath and then—"</p>
<p>"Yes, <i>then</i>—" emphasized Hazen in wavering but peremptory tones.</p>
<p>"He told me what had led to all this misery. That as yet this compact was
between us two, and us two only. That he had considered my youth, and in
speaking of me to the Chief had held back my name even while promising
my assistance. That he should continue to consider it, by keeping my name
in reserve till he had returned from his mission, and if that mission
failed, or succeeded too well, and he did not return, I might regard
myself as freed from the Cause, unless my enlarging nature led me to
attach myself to it of my own free will. That said, he went, and for a
year I lived under the dread of his return and all the obligations that
return would entail. Then came tidings of his death, tidings for which he
may not have been responsible, but which he never contradicted, and I
thought myself free—free to enjoy life, and the fortune that had so
unexpectedly come to me; free to love and, alas! free to marry. And that
is why," she pursued, in all the anguish of a dreadful retrospect, "I
recoiled in such horror and hung, a dead weight on your arm, when on
turning from the altar where we had just pledged ourselves to mutual love
and mutual life, I saw among the faces before me the changed but still
recognizable one of my brother, and beheld him make the fatal sign which
meant, 'You are wanted. Come at once.'"</p>
<p>"Wretch!" issued from the frenzied lips of the half-maddened bridegroom,
as his glance flashed on Hazen. "Had you no mercy? Have you no mercy now,
that you should torture her young, credulous soul with these fanciful
obligations; obligations which no human being has any right to impose
upon another, whatsoever the Cause, holy or unholy, he represents?"</p>
<p>"Mercy? It is the weakness of the easy soul. There is no ease here," he
cried, touching his breast with no gentle hand.</p>
<p>"Then you forget my money," suggested Georgian. "Can you expect mercy
from a man who sees a million just within his grasp? I know," she
acknowledged, as Hazen lifted that same ungentle hand in haughty protest,
"that it was not for himself. I do not think Alfred would disturb a fly
for his own comfort, but he would wreck a woman's hopes, a good man's
happiness for the Cause. He admitted as much to me, <i>and more</i>, in the
interview we held that afternoon at the St. Denis. I had to go to him at
once, and I had to employ subterfuge in order to do so," she went on in
rapid explanation, as she saw her husband's eye refill with doubt under a
remembrance of the shame and anguish of that unhappy afternoon. "I had
not the courage to leave you openly at the carriage door. Besides, I
hoped to work on Alfred's pity in our interview together, or, if not
that, to buy my release and return to you a free woman. But the wound
which had changed his face for me had changed and made hard his heart. He
had other purposes for me than quiet living with a man who could have no
real interest in the Cause. The money I inherited, the rare and growing
beauty which he declared me to have, were too valuable to the brethren
for me to hope for any existence in which their interests were not
paramount. I might return to you, subject to the same authoritative beck
and call which had put me in my present position, or I might leave you at
once and forever. No half measures were possible. Was I, a bride, loving
and beloved by my husband, to listen to either of these alternatives? I
rebelled, and then the thunderbolt fell.</p>
<p>"I was no longer on probation, no longer subject to his will alone. I was
a fully affiliated member. That day my name had been sent to the Chief.
This meant obedience on my part or a vengeance I felt it impossible to
consider. While I lived I need never hope again for freedom without
penalty.</p>
<p>"'While I lived'; the words rang in my ears. I did not need to weigh
them; I knew that they were words of truth. There is no power on earth
so inescapable as that exercised by a secret society, and this one has
a terrible safeguard. None but he who keeps the list knows the members.
You, Roger, might be one, and I never suspect it, unless you chose to
give me the sign. Knowing this, I realized that my life was not worth the
purchase if I sought to cross the will of my own brother. Nor yours,
either. It was the last thought which held me. While I dutifully
listened, my mind was working out the deception which was to release me,
and when I left him it was to take the first step in the complicated plot
by which I hoped to recover my lost happiness. And I nearly succeeded.
You have seen what I have borne, what difficulties I have faced, what
discoveries eluded, but this last, this greatest ordeal, was too much. I
could not listen unmoved to a description of my own drowned body. I, who
had calculated on all, had not calculated on this. The horror overcame
me—I forgot—perhaps because God was weary of my many deceptions!"</p>
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