Anna Katharine Green

“ The draft revived Hazen; he looked up at Georgian. "I believe you, so do these men believe you. But you were not alone in this plot. Where is Anitra? Where is the deaf and solitary one you dragged from the streets of New York to bolster up your plot? Tell us and tell us quickly. Where is Anitra?"
"Anitra? Do you ask that?" cried Harper, roused to speak for the first time by his boundless amazement and indignation. "You have described the body in the pool—a description which fits either sister, and yet you would make this woman tell us what you have seen with your own eyes." ”

“ She was now at the head of the stairs. Mr. Ransom had closed his door, but not latched it, and as she turned to go down the hall, followed by the chattering landlady, he swung it open for an instant and so caught one full glimpse of her beloved figure. She was dressed in a long rain-coat and had some sort of modish hat on her head, which, in spite of its simplicity, gave her a highly fashionable air. A woman to draw all eyes, but such a mystery to her husband! Such a mystery to all who knew her story, or rather her actions, for no one seemed to know her story. ”

“ Because Anitra must have some disability to distinguish her from Georgian? Because you are not Anitra? Because you are Georgian after all?"
Georgian!
The word fell like a plummet into the hollow of that great expectancy. Ransom shivered and even Harper's hard cheek changed color. Hazen only stood unmoved, his look, his grasp, the spirit behind that look and grasp, implacable and determined. Their influence was terrible; slowly she succumbed to it against her will and purpose, the will and purpose of a very strong woman. Her eyes rose in a painful and lingering struggle to his face. ”

“ She shrunk, not at the word but at his movement, which undoubtedly was abrupt; but immediately recovered herself and, meeting him half-way, cried out in the unnaturally loud tones of the very deaf:
"They don't bring my sister back. She is drowned, drowned. But you still have Anitra," she exclaimed in child-like triumph. "Anitra will be good to you. Don't forsake the poor girl. She will go where you go and be very obedient and not get angry ever again." ”

“ I scrawled those lines," declared Ransom. "It was a test—"
"Which I commanded you to make," put in Hazen. Then in fainter and less strenuous tones, "She's right. Georgian Ransom is doomed; no one can save her."
"False again!" This time it was Harper who interposed. "I can and will. You forget that I know the name of your Chief. Conspiracy such as you hint at is indictable in this country. I am a lawyer. I shall protect, not only your sister, but her money."
The smile he received in return evinced no ordinary scorn. ”

“ Hazen's face was frightful to see; the more so that physical weakness contended with the outsweep of passion, so great and overwhelming in its power and destructive force that to the two onlookers it seemed to spring from deeper sources than ordinary life and death, and have its birth, as well as its culmination, in the unknown and all that is most terrible in the human mind and human experience.
Anitra's eye was spellbound by it. ”

“ Here he had seen her name before its erasement from the family monument, and here he should see—could he say Anitra if he found her bending over those graves; the woman who could not hear, who could not read,—whose childish memory, if she had any in connection with this spot, could not be distinct enough or sufficiently intelligent to guide her to this one plot? No. Human credulity can go far, but not so far as that. He knew that all his old doubts would return if, on entering the cemetery, he found her under the brown shaft carved with the name of Hazen. ”

“ But he stopped to read no letters now.
"Show me the way to those falls," he cried, pocketing the letter as he rushed by the disheveled Anitra into the open hall. "I'm her husband, Roger Ransom. Who goes with me? He who does is my friend for life."
The clerk and one or two others rushed for their coats and lanterns. He waited for nothing. The roar of the waterfall had told him too many tales that day. And the will! Her will just signed!
"Georgian!"
They could hear his cry.
"Georgian! Georgian! Wait! wait! hear what I have to say!" ”

“ Ransom, I must."
The hope which had held her up, the life which had returned to body and spirit since this prospect of a possible future had dawned upon her, faded from glance and smile.
"Then good-by, Roger, we shall never have those happy days together of which we have often dreamt. I may stay with you a week, a month, a year, but the horror of a great fear will be over us, and never, never can we know joy."
She threw herself into her husband's arms; she clung to him. ”

“ Stepping in front of Hazen, he observed with force and unmistakable resolution:
"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?"
But Hazen was as impervious to direct attack as he had been to a covert one.
"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. ”

“ As he did so, his eye encountered the hot, dry gaze of Mr. Ransom, fixed upon him in a suspense too cruel to prolong, and with a sudden change of manner he moved from the door, saying significantly as he led the way out:
"Let us have a word or two in your own room. It is a principle of mine not to trust even the ears of the deaf with what it is desirable to keep secret." ”

“ Ransom had bent his ear to his wife's door.
"All still in here," he cried. "Not a sound. Something dreadful has happened—"
Just then Anitra's door fell back and a wild image confronted him and such others as had by this time collected in the passageway. With only a shawl covering her nightdress, the gipsy-like creature stood clawing the air and answering the looks that appealed to her, with wild gurgles, till suddenly her hot glances fell on Roger Ransom, when she instantly became rigid and stammered out:
"She's gone! I saw her black figure go by my window. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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."
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. ”

“ Then after a moment of oppressive silence, "Did you notice, when we all came in, the figure of a woman disappearing up the stair way? It was Anitra's and it paused before it reached the top, and I saw her eyes staring down at Hazen's helpless figure with a wildness in its inquiry that has sapped all my courage. How are we to answer that girl when she asks us what has happened? How make her know that Hazen is her brother and that he has just risked his life to satisfy himself and us that Georgian was really lost in that dreadful pool." ”

“ I have evidence upon evidence of the fact right in this room with me; evidence much more convincing and far less disputable than this surprising twin can bring forward if her identity is questioned. Georgian had a twin sister, but she was buried years ago. I was never buried. I simply did not return from a well-known and dangerous voyage. The struggle I had for life—you cannot want the details now—has left its indelible impress in the scar which has turned me from a personable man into what some people might call a monstrosity. ”

“ The spectators had been barred from the point and stood lined up in the road overlooking the eddy. They were numerous and very eager. Hazen's brows drew together in his first exhibition of feeling, as he saw women and even children in the crowd, and caught the expression of morbid anticipation with which they all turned as he stepped with his two associates over the rope which had been stretched across the base of the out-curving head line.
"Cormorants!" escaped his lips. "They look for a feast of death, but they will be disappointed." ”

“ The world will go on, you will try your little ways, your petty reforms, your slow-moving legislation and promise of justice to the weak, but the invincible is the ready; ready to act; ready to suffer, ready to die so that God is justified of his children and man lifted into brotherhood and equality. You cannot strive against the unseen and the fearless. The Cause will triumph though all else fails. Georgian, I am sorry—" He was tottering now, but he held them back with a stern gesture, "I don't think I ever knew just what love was. ”

“ 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! ”

“ Then, as Hazen's lip curled, he added with dignified candor, "I scorn to retort by throwing any doubt on your assertion of relationship to my lost wife, or the possibility of these good people being misled by your confident bearing and a possible likeness about the eyes to the boy they knew. But one question I will hazard, and that before we have gone a step further. Why does it seem so credible to you that Georgian, a much loved and loving woman, should have leaped to a watery death within a week of her marriage? ”

“ You would risk death. Risk something less final; risk your place in my esteem, your standing among men, and confess the full truth about this matter. If it involves crime—why, I'm a lawyer and can see you through better than you can win through by your own misdirected efforts. The truth, my lad, the truth, nothing else will serve you."
The look he received he will never forget.
"You are a man of limited experience, Mr. Harper," were the words which accompanied it. "You would not understand the truth, Georgian or me. Ransom might, but I shall not even risk Ransom's discretion. ”

“ Hazen sprang to the door which Ransom had carefully closed, and was about to fall on his knees before the keyhole when he suddenly stiffened himself and, turning towards the lawyer, cried with a new strain of loftiness in his tone:
"You. You shall do the looking, only promise to be very minute in your description of her behavior. It's a great trust I repose in you. See that you honor it."
The revulsion of feeling caused in the lawyer by this show of confidence was not perceptible. But it softened his step as well as his manner as he crossed to do the other's bidding. ”

“ When he mentioned the will which Georgian had made a few hours prior to her disappearance, Hazen's hand slipped aside from the wound it had sought to cover, and Ransom caught sight of the sudden throb which deepened its hue. It was the one infallible sign that the man was not wholly without feeling, and it had sprung to life at an intimation involving money. ”

“ Ransom desired secrecy. She had every right to demand it of me."
Mr. Ransom's face fell. Hope had flashed upon him only to disappear again. The lawyer eyed him out of the corner of his eye, his mouth working slightly as he walked to and fro between his desk and the door.
"Mrs. Ransom will not always feel herself hampered by a sister, or, if you prefer it, a brother who has so inconveniently come back from the dead. You will have the pleasure of her society some day. There is no doubt about her affection for you."
"But that isn't it," exclaimed the now thoroughly discouraged husband. ”

“ No one else, least of all himself, feels any desire to go down to that whirling eddy for confirmation of my story. And they are wise. I do not think that any man with less experience than myself could sound the depths of that vortex and come up alive. The noise—the swirl—the sense of being sucked down—down in ever-increasing fury—but my purpose kept the life in me. ”

“ He's a man worthy of all the assistance which money can bring. You do not need her wealth; Anitra—well, she will be cared for, but Auchincloss—promise—brother."
Ransom half drew back in his amazement. Then started forward again. This man whom he had always distrusted, whom he had looked upon as Georgian's possible enemy, certainly his own, was looking into his eyes with a gaze of trust, almost of affection. The money was not for himself; he showed it by the noble, almost grand look with which he waited for his answer; a look that carried conviction despite Ransom's prejudice and great dislike. ”

“ As Harper stood watching Ransom's crouched, almost insensible figure, he perceived a slight dark form steal from the shadows and lay a hand on the stooping man's shoulder, then as he failed to move or give any token of feeling this touch, he heard Anitra's voice say in accents almost musical:
"You will get ill here; you are not used to the cold and the night air. Come back to the house; Georgian would wish it." ”