The Purchase Price by Emerson Hough (ereader with android txt) 📖

And you have met me once, before this moment! And you are a Southerner; and, they tell me—"

"That once was enough."

"Your pardon, sir! Which way does the conversation tend?"

"To one end only," he resumed sullenly, desperately. "You shall not leave. If you did, I should only follow you."

"How excellent, to be taken by one brigand, handed over to another brigand, and threatened with perpetual attendance of the latter! Oh, excellent indeed! Admirable country!"

"You despise the offer of one who would be a respectful servitor."

She mocked at him. "How strange a thing is man! That is the first argument he makes to a woman, the first promise he makes. Yet at once he forgets the argument and forgets the promise. What you desire is to be not my servant, but my master, I should say. You fancy you are my master? Well, then, the situation seems to me not without its amusing features. I am a prisoner, I am set free. I am sought to be again put in durance, under duress, by a man who claims to be my humble servitor—who also claims to be a gentleman! It is most noble of you! I do not, however, comprehend."

The dull flush on his face showed at least no weakening on his own part. "Come now!" he exclaimed impatiently, "let us arrive at the issue."

"And what honorable enterprise is it which you propose?"

"To make it short, Madam, I propose to take you home with me. Now you have heard it." He spoke in a desperate, icy calm.

[Illustration: I propose to take you home with me.]

"You flatter me! But how, if I may ask, do you intend to accomplish all that?"

"I have not thought so far along. In peace, if you please: it would be much better."

"But, my God!" she exclaimed, pausing in her walk up and down. "You speak as though you meant these things! Could it be there, out there—beyond the great river—yes, my other jailer told me that we were not to stop this side! I suppose you are my new keeper, then, and not my friend? Duty again, and not chivalry! Is that what you mean?"

"I hardly know what I mean," he answered miserably. "I like all this no better than yourself. But let us begin with what is certain. Each hour, each day I may be able to hold you here is that much gained. I can't let you go."

"Most excellent! You begin well. But I shall not submit to such insults longer. Such treatment is new to me. It shall not go unrevenged. Nor shall it continue now."

"It is too late!" he broke in. "I know how much I have taken leave of my own self-respect, but there are times when one takes leave of everything—cares for nothing that lies between him and one purpose. It would do no good for you to claim the protection of others—even if I had to fight all the boat's officers, I might win. But in that case you could only lose. You would have to explain who you are, why you are here. You would not be believed."

"What I wish to know is only one thing," she rejoined. "Not offering terms, I want to know what is the alternative you have proposed. Let us see if we can not reason calmly over this matter." She also was suddenly cold and pale. The hand of a swift terror was upon her now.

"You ask me to reason, and I answer I have no reason left. You ask me what I propose, ask what we should do, and I answer I do not know. But also I know that if you left me, I should never see you again."

"But what difference, then? You are, I presume, only my new constable."

"There could be no social chance for me—I've ruined that. You would exact defeat of me as surely as you met me, there."

"Social chance?—Social—! Well, the bon Dieu! And here you exact defeat for yourself. But what defeat? Come, your speech sounds more personal than professional. What can you possibly think yourself to be, but my new jailer?"

"I'm not so sure. Look, each turn of the wheels takes us farther away from the places where society goes on in its own grooves. Out here we manage the world in our own ways."

Unconsciously the eyes of both of them turned down the river, along which the boat now steadily continued its course. He went on somberly.

"Out there," he said, pointing toward the west, "out beyond the big river, there's a place where the wilderness sweeps. Out there the law is that of the old times. It is far away."

"How dare you speak in such way to me?" she half whispered, low and tense. "And you claim manhood!"

"No," he said, sighing. "I—claim nothing. I deny nothing. I assert nothing—except that I'm going to be not your Jailer, but your keeper. Yes, I'm going to hold you, keep you! You shall not get away. Why," he added, pacing apart for a moment. "I have no shame left. I've planned very little. I thought I might even ask you to be a guest at my own plantation. My place is out on the edge of the world, thirty miles back from the river. An amanuensis is as reasonable there as on this boat, in the company of a frontier army man."

"That, then, is your robber castle, I suppose."

"I rule there, Madam," he said simply.

"Over thrall and guest?"

"Over all who come there, Madam."

"I've heard of the time," she went on icily, "when this country was younger, how the seigneurs who held right under the old French kings claimed the law of the high, low and middle justice. Life, death, honor, all lay in their hands—in the hands of individuals. But I thought those times past. I thought that this river was different from the St. Lawrence. I thought that this was a republic, and inhabited by men. I thought the South had gentlemen—"

"You taunt me, my dear lady, my dear girl. But be not so sure that times have changed. Out beyond, there, where we are going, I could put you a mile back from the river, and you would find yourself in a wilderness the most pathless in the world to-day, worse than the St. Lawrence ever knew at any time, more lawless, more beyond the reach of any law. These lands out here are wild; yes, and they breed wild men. They have been the home of others besides myself, lawless, restless under any restraint. If you come to wildernesses, and if you come to the law of the individual, I say we're only just approaching that sort of thing right now, and here."

She looked at him, some inarticulate sort of sound in her throat, fully frightened now, seeing how mistaken she had been. He went on:

"Out there in the big valleys beyond the river, you would indeed disappear. No man could guess what had become of you. You would never be found again. And without any doubt or question, Madam, if you force me to it, you shall have your answer in that way. I'm not a boy to be fooled with, to be denied. I rule out there, over free and thrall. There's where you're going. Your other jailer told you the truth!"

She looked at him slowly and fully now, the color fading from her face. Her soul had touched the steel in his own soul. She knew that, once aroused, this man would hesitate at nothing. Crowded beyond his limit, there was no measure he would not employ. Other means must be employed with such a nature as his. She temporized.

"Listen. You are a man of family and traditions,—my late guardian told me. You have been chosen to a position of trust, you are one of the lawmakers of your own state. Do you ever stop to reflect what you are doing, how you are abandoning yourself, your own traditions, your own duties, when you speak as you have been speaking to me? I had committed no crime. I am held by no process of law. You take risks."

"I know. I have thrown it all away in the balance. If these things were known, I would be ruined." He spoke dully and evenly, indifferently.

"I lack many things, Madam," he resumed at length. "I do not lack honesty even with myself, and I do not lie even to a woman. That's the trouble. I have not lied to you. Come now, let us understand. I suppose it's because I've been alone so much. Civilization does not trouble us much back there. These are my people—they love me—I hold them in my hand so long as I live up to their standards. Maybe I've thrown them away, right now,—my people."

"You are not living up to your standards."

"No, but I can not make you understand me. I can not make you understand that the great thing of life isn't the foolish ambition of a man to get into a state legislature, to make laws, to see them enforced. It isn't the original purpose of man to get on in politics or business, or social regard. Man is made to love some woman. Woman is made to be loved by some man. That's life. It's all of it. I know there's nothing else."

"I have heard my share of such talk, perhaps, in this or that corner of the world," she answered, with scorn. "Excellent, for you to force it upon a woman who is helpless!"

"Talk doesn't help, but deeds will. You're going along with me. I would swear you belonged to me, if need be. As, by the Almighty God! I intend you some day shall. All the officers of the law are sworn to help a man claim what is his own, this side or that of the slave line. All the stars in the sky are sworn to help a man who feels what I feel. Don't tempt me, don't try to drive me—it will never do. I'll be harder to handle than the man who lost you to me last evening in a game of cards,—and who went away last night and left you—to me."

As she gazed at him she saw his hands clenched, his mouth twitching. "You would do that, even—" she began. "I have never known men grew thus unscrupulous. A game—a game at cards! And I—was lost—I!—I! And also won? What can you mean? Am I then indeed a slave, a chattel? Ah, indeed, now am I lost! My God, and I have no country, no kin, no God, to avenge me!"

A sort of sob caught in his throat. "I was wrong!" he cried suddenly. "I always say the wrong word, do the wrong thing, take the wrong way. But—don't you remember about Martin Luther? He said he couldn't help himself. 'Here stand I, I can not otherwise, God help me!' That's just the way with me—you blame me, but I tell you I can not otherwise. And I've told the truth. I've made wreck of everything right now. You ask me to make plans; and I tell you I can not. I would take you off the boat by force rather than see you go away from me. This thing is not yet worked out to the end. I'm not yet done. That's all I know. You'll have to go along with me."

A sudden revulsion swept over him. He trembled as he stood, and reached out a hand.

"Give me a chance!" he broke out, sobered now. "It was a new thing, this feeling. Come, you sent for me—you asked me—that other man placed me in