'I had no others. I heard fools whisper that I was a detective, moreover, and that made me feel safe.'
'You followed me down here yesterday, did you? Then why do nothing till to-night?'
The fellow hesitated, and again peered rapidly into every corner of the night.
'Why did you wait?' repeated Miles impatiently.
An evil grin overspread the countenance of Jem Pound. He seemed to be dallying with his answer—rolling the sweet morsel on his tongue—as though loth to part with the source of so much private satisfaction. Miles perceived something of this, and, for the first time that night, felt powerless to measure the extent of his danger. Up to this point he had realised and calculated to a nicety the strength of the hold of this man over him, and he had flattered himself that it was weak in comparison with his own counter-grip; but now he suspected, nay felt, the nearness of another and a stronger hand.
'Answer, man,' he cried, with a scarcely perceptible tremor in his voice, 'before I force you! Why did you wait?'
'I went back,' said Pound slowly, slipping his hand beneath his coat, and comfortably grasping the haft of his sheath-knife, 'to report progress.'
'To whom?'
'To—your wife!'
'What!'
'Your wife!'
'You are lying, my man,' said Miles, with a forced laugh. 'She never came to England.'
'She didn't, didn't she? Why, of course you ought to know best, even if you don't; but if you asked me, I should say maybe she isn't a hundred miles from you at this very instant!'
'Speak that lie again,' cried Miles, his low voice now fairly quivering with passion and terror, 'and I strike you dead where you stand! She is in Australia, and you know it!'
Jem Pound stepped two paces backward, and answered in a loud, harsh tone:
'You fool! she is here!'
Miles stepped forward as if to carry out his threat; but even as he moved he heard a rustle at his side, and felt a light hand laid on his arm. He started, turned, and looked round. There, by his side—poverty-stricken almost to rags, yet dark and comely as the summer's night—stood the woman whom years ago he had made his wife!
A low voice full of tears whispered his name: 'Ned, Ned!' and 'Ned, Ned!' again and again.
He made no answer, but stood like a granite pillar, staring at her. She pressed his arm with one hand, and laid the other caressingly on his breast; and as she stood thus, gazing up through a mist into his stern, cold face, this topmost hand rested heavily upon him. To him it seemed like lead; until suddenly—did it press a bruise or a wound, that such a hideous spasm should cross his face? that he should shake off the woman so savagely?
By the merest accident, the touch of one woman had conjured the vision of another; he saw before him two, not one; two as opposite in their impressions on the senses as the flower and the weed; as separate in their associations as the angels of light and darkness.
Yet this poor woman, the wife, could only creep near him again—forgetting her repulse, since he was calm the next moment—and press his hand to her lips, so humbly that now he stood and bore it, and repeat brokenly:
'I have found him! Oh, thank God! Now at last I have found him!'
While husband and wife stood thus, silenced—one by love, the other by sensations of a very different kind— the third person watched them with an expression which slowly changed from blank surprise to mortification and dumb rage. At last he seemed unable to stand it any longer, for he sprang forward and whispered hoarsely in the woman's ear:
'What are you doing? Are you mad? What are we here for? What have we crossed the sea for? Get to work, you fool, or——'
'To work to bleed me, between you!' cried Ned Ryan, shaking himself again clear of the woman. 'By heaven, you shall find me a stone!'
Elizabeth Ryan turned and faced her ally, and waved him back with a commanding gesture.
'No, Jem Pound,' said she, in a voice as clear and true as a clarion, 'it is time to tell the truth: I did not come to England for that! O Ned, Ned! I have used this man as my tool—can't you see?—to bring me to you. Ned, my husband, I am by your side; have you no word of welcome?'
She clung to him, with supplication in her white face and drooping, nerveless figure; and Pound looked on speechless. So he had been fooled by this smooth-tongued, fair-faced trash; and all his plans and schemes, and hungry longings and golden expectations, were to crumble into dust before treachery such as this! So, after all, he had been but a dupe—a ladder to be used and kicked aside! A burning desire came over him to plunge his knife into this false demon's heart, and end all.
But Ryan pushed back his wife a third time, gently but very firmly.
'Come, Liz,' said he, coldly enough, yet with the edge off his voice and manner, 'don't give us any of this. This was all over between us long ago. If it's money you want, name a sum; though I have little enough, you shall have what I can spare, for I swear to you I got away with my life and little else. But if it's sentiment, why, it's nonsense; and you know that well enough.'
Elizabeth Ryan stood as one stabbed, who must fall the moment the blade is withdrawn from the wound; which office was promptly performed by one who missed few opportunities.
'Why, of course!' exclaimed Pound, with affected sympathy with the wife and indignation against the husband. 'To be sure you see how the wind lies, missis?'
