Ewing's Lady Part 31

"Randall"--she had regained a little of her first coolness--"I'm done for. I found that out to-day. I've a year to live, at most. A scant year, if it's to be like this. Try to grasp it. I've wanted so much, had so little of life. But, I must go, they tell me. Can you understand what that means, as well as I understood what this meant to you--a sentence of death, a few little months to s.n.a.t.c.h at happiness?"

He stared at her uncertainly, but half comprehending. She saw that the drink was affecting him at last. His eyes were dulled, his face had lost its centered look.

"Going to die, Eleanor? Die in a year? What rot! Don't talk rot. n.o.body dies in a year." He spoke carefully, with a deliberate attack on each word, as if he mistrusted his tongue.

"But it's true, Randall, I swear it's true. Can you understand?"

"Understand?" he repeated, and through her tense absorption she was astonished to see on his face an incredible look of pity. "Understand?

Why, of course! And it's too bad, my girl. Poor Eleanor! Die in a year--why wouldn't I understand? But never mind"--he seemed to search clumsily for words of cheer. "Death isn't anything but an incident in the scheme of life--a precious contemptible one, I've no doubt. We live, and that's a little thing--but death's littler. I dare say we live as long as we need to. Who was the old chap--Plotinus, wasn't it?--conceived the body to be a penitential mechanism for the soul? All the better if we expiate early. Gad! I must have had a quant.i.ty of things to atone for--though I'm really younger than you may think, Nell.

Poor girl--poor girl!" He brightened as he drained his gla.s.s to her.

"Here's to you, wherever you are. Come, be cheerful anyway. What was it struck in my mind yesterday?--a sentence from one of Arbuthnot's letters to Swift--just the meat for you--'A reasonable hope of going--a reasonable hope of going to a good place and an absolute certainty of leaving a bad one.' That's the sentiment--keep it in mind, my dear."

She was nerving herself to new appeals, half fearing she could not hold his attention. She seized on that unprecedented look of compa.s.sion.

"But, Randall, you'll let him off--let him off for me--for my sake." In her eagerness she rose and fluttered to the desk, standing before him.

He whirled his chair about, and the look of commiseration had gone.

"No, no, no! You can't understand, Nell. I couldn't let him off if I wanted to. It's fate, its retribution--the sins of the father--it's scriptural, I tell you--" His eyes were gleaming again with steely implacability.

"But for me, Randall, for my sake, for me alone--not thinking of him?"

"Ah, lady, set me a harder task, but one of dignity--as difficult, as dangerous as you like, so it has some dignity. But not that. Here"--he gracefully extended the handle of the dagger to her--"slay me an' you will--the blade is keen--a toy, but deadly--I'll die smiling if you wish. But don't ask for that cub's happiness. Don't rob me of my pay, Nell, my pay for all I've endured from him, his boastings and snivelings, and his detestable handshakes. Don't talk rot, I say, even if you must die."

Again she set herself to plead, desperation feeding the fire in her head until she knew not her words. She was conscious only of a torrent of speech, coaxing, imploring, wheedling, even threatening. But all she evoked was the steady, smiling negative, his head shaken unwittingly to the rhythm of her phrases.

She stopped at last, panting, striving to keep back the pa.s.sionate words of entreaty that still formed, crushing them down in a maddened consciousness of their impotence. She stared wildly, feeling only a still stubborn determination. Ewing would soon come--yet it seemed that she had no resource save appeal. She felt this and raged against it, striding away from Teevan across the room. For the first time in her gentle life she was feeling the sensation she thought a man must feel in fighting. She had an impulse to strike blindly, to wound, to beat down with her hands. Without volition she measured her antagonist and wondered deliriously if she could throw him to the floor. He seemed so small to her, and hateful--hateful and small enough to kill. She closed her eyes to shut him out, but opened them again quickly, for everything rocked in the darkness. She incessantly pictured this creature, naked in his poverty of manhood, smiling up at Ewing, the friendly one, who stood bowed down, blighted and broken of heart. Sometimes Ewing had his arm over his face, and she felt that he would never take it away--move on thus forever, like a figure in an anguished dream.

Constantly beside her thoughts, like a little refrain, went the remembrance that she had brought him there, torn him from his youth and splendid dreams to give him to this--she the betrayer! The fever waxed, the tortured blood trampled in her head like hurrying hoofs.

But she could not strike Teevan, extinguish him with blows, and she set herself again to play the beggar. And she could not beg across the room.

Bit by bit she crept to the entreated one, her great eyes full of flame and fear, and laid pitiful hands on his shoulder. Still the shaken head met her, the icy smile, the dulled eyes.

"No good talking, Nell! No good! You mortify me, my word you do. Demand something great, something to task a man; ask me----"

Again he picked up the dagger with a return to that extravagant air of the sighing gallant.

"--here, I point it to my heart, see! A mere thrust--your beautiful hand is still equal to it. I'd be proud of the blow. I'd give you my life gladly--but not my self-respect. You're too stunning a woman, Nell, to waste yourself on that cub--a woman to die for indeed. You were never finer than at this moment." In the excess of his emotion he threw an arm about her waist. She started back but he held her.

"Never finer, Nell, on my soul--too fine for that d.a.m.ned----"

She put out her hands in an instinctive, shuddering movement of repulsion. Still he clung to her, muttering his insupportable phrases.

He clung and she could not release herself without doing what she had thought was impossible--exert her unused hands in striking, thrusting, beating off. She hesitated: she did not like to touch him. He looked very small and low in his chair. How low he seemed from her dizzy height! And yet he held so well. His voice came faintly, too, as if from afar, floating up faint and hateful. So he would hold Ewing and slay him with his voice. He was playing with the dagger again and proffering his heart with maudlin eyes. Prisoning her still with his right arm, he took her hand in his left and clumsily set it on the dagger's hilt.

"It would be a sweet death, Nell. Press home!" He drew her closer, so that she staggered on his shoulder. "Gad! your eyes are fine. What a woman you are! Too great, Nell, for that beaten whelp, even before he took to your sister----"

She gave a desperate little cry and struck out to free herself. It was hardly more than a gesture to have him away, but she was conscious, with a lightning shock, that the blade moved under her hand. She heard Teevan's shrill scream of fright and pain----

"You're killing me--you're killing me!"

But she saw only Ewing with covered face, and pushed the harder, lost to all but her blind sense of opposition. Then she heard a new note in Teevan's cry.

"Ewing! Ewing!"

She turned quickly, while Teevan retreated round a corner of the desk, snarling his rage--turned to see Ewing.

CHAPTER XXV

MRS. LAITHE IS ENLIGHTENED

He stood just inside the door, hat in hand, regarding the scene with a look that was troubled yet cool. She felt her way cautiously back to a chair, afraid of fainting, and grasped it for support. Finding that her hand still clutched the dagger, she dropped it with a shudder of disgust.

Ewing shrewdly noted where the dagger fell, then his eyes flashed to Teevan. There was a stain of blood on the silken shirt, and the little man was staring down at this, incredulous.

"By G.o.d! she meant it!" he muttered. Then his eyes rose to meet Ewing's, and a look of sudden malignance blazed into them.

"So you've come!" The cry, like the look, was full of hate. "You've come in time, you whelp! Now you'll hear something you might have heard that first night when I had to fuddle you with tales of a seizure. Now you'll know----"

But the woman started toward him with a suddenness that broke his speech.

"If you tell him he'll kill you--" The words came with a quick, whispering intensity, and there was a rapt, almost rejoicing look on her face, as of one eager for the deed.

Teevan looked scornfully to Ewing again, but was chilled by a certain sharp, cold light in his eyes, the look of one alert and ready. His words gave meaning to this look.

"If you tell me, I'll kill you," said Ewing. The sentence was evenly uttered, and the tone was low, almost deferential, but the intention was not to be mistaken.

Teevan laughed, flourishing a gesture of scorn for the threat.

"I'm no coward"--but he broke off, waiting, watching, with fear in his eyes.

"I'll take this," said Ewing. He lifted the portrait tenderly from the chair and thrust it under his arm with a protecting movement. Teevan stared at this with an air of fine disdain, but did not speak.

The woman had been waiting for his words with parted lips. Now she breathed a long, trembling sigh of relief and turned to Ewing.

"You see, he has nothing to say. Let us go."

He opened the door for her and closed it after them without looking again at Teevan.

"There's a reason why I can't do it for you now," he said, as they went down the stairs. She wondered what he could mean, but was too little alive to ask. When they reached the street she became at once interested in a belated laborer going home with a loosely tied bundle over his shoulder, odds and ends of small boards, refuse from some building. He whistled in a tired way as he trudged on, not looking at them. She felt pleased at the thought that his wife was going to have wood with which to cook the poor fellow's supper. The dark was fast gathering, but children still romped in the street. An elderly stout man pa.s.sed, his hat off, wielding a palm-leaf fan. She was surprised at this, for the outer air had fallen on her with icy clutch, making her draw the scarf more closely about her.

Ewing would have left her at her door, but she urged him to go in. She took him to sit in the unlighted library, and there, when he could no longer see her face, he was astounded to hear her talk of her girlhood, her schooldays, of the few people they knew in common, of Piersoll's new book, of her brother's ranch life; of a score of little gossipy matters that would occur to the untroubled mind in a twilight chat. But when he rose to go after a little time, she was in an instant wild panic of protest, seizing one of his hands with a convulsive grip. He covered her poor hand with his own and regarded her with pity. She lifted her face to him with a sudden wild entreaty for shelter. "Oh, stay with me--stay--stay--and comfort me. I am so ill, and I--I would comfort you." He soothed her as best he could, protesting that he would stay, and in a few moments she was talking cheerfully of Kensington and of Virginia. She tried to amuse him with tales of Virginia's childhood--how she had been such a droll and merry little creature. She still retained his hand, gripping it with an intensity through which he could feel the quivering of her whole body.

Only once did she refer to Teevan. "Please don't see him again," she urged. "Promise me, promise never to let him tell you--anything. Please, please promise that!"

Believing she pleaded for herself, he felt that old longing to lift her in his arms and show her there without words how little she had to fear.

But he controlled himself to answer simply, "I promise; I'll never let him speak to me again. Don't be afraid; he shall never say anything to me."