Play the Game! Part 23

"He's been better ever since that bit of water," said his wife, thankfully. "And Juan will fetch us more! Good soul! If ever we come out of this, Rich' must do something very splendid for him."

Carter went down into the _sala_. Honor had asked him to leave her, but he found that he could not stay away from her; the remembrance of her eyes when she looked at Jimsy was intolerable in the loneliness of his own room. The big living room was empty but he supposed Honor would be back presently, and he sat down in an easy chair and leaned his head back and stared at the ceiling. He had arrived, very nearly, at the end of his endurance. He knew it himself and he was husbanding his failing strength as best he could. All his life, at times of illness or stress, he had been subject to fainting fits; miraculously, in these dreadful days, he had not fainted once, but now waves were rising about him, almost submerging him. If the Indian came soon with the water ... if he could once drink his fill ... if he could drink even a few drops ... he could hold out. But the Indian had been gone for more than an hour, and there was grave doubt of his ever coming back.

His eyes, skimming the ceiling, dropped to the shelves of books which ran about the room and rose almost to meet it. They came to a startled halt on a vase of ferns on a high shelf. A vase of ferns. There must have been water in it. _Perhaps there was water in it now!_ He was so weak that it was a tremendous effort for him to drag himself out of his chair and across the room, to climb up on the book ladder and reach for it. He grew so dizzy that it seemed as if he must drop it. He shook it.

_Water!_ He lifted out the ferns and looked. It was almost full. He stood there with it in his hand, his eyes on the doors. He wanted with all his heart to call Honor, to share it. His heart and his mind wanted to call her, but his hands lifted the vase to his dry lips and he drank in great gulps. He stopped himself before he was half satisfied. He was equal to that. Then he put the ferns back in the vase and the vase back on the shelf and went into the hall and called upstairs to her.

Honor came at once. "Oh, Carter, has Juan come?"

"No, not yet! But I think--I hope--I've made a discovery! Look!" He pointed to the vase.

She caught her breath. "There might be water in it?"

"Yes, I'm sure there is." Again, more steadily this time, he mounted the little sliding book ladder and reached for the vase, and Honor stood watching him with wide eyes, her cracked lips parted.

"_Water?_" she whispered.

He nodded solemnly, shaking the tall vase for her to hear the heartening sound of it. When he stood on the floor he held it toward her. "You first, Honor."

"No." She was trembling. "We'll pour it out into a pitcher. If there's enough to divide, we'll all have some. If there's just a little, we'll give it to Mr. King." She went away, walking a little unsteadily, putting out a hand here and there against the wall or the back of a chair, and in a moment she came back with a tall gla.s.s pitcher.

"Careful, Cartie ... mustn't spill a drop...."

There was less than a cupful of dark, stale water, with bits of fern fronds floating in it.

"Only enough for him," said Honor, her chin quivering. "Oh, Cartie, I'm so thirsty ... so crazy thirsty...."

"You must take it yourself," said Carter, sternly. "Every drop." He held the pitcher up to her.

Honor hesitated. "Cartie, I couldn't trust myself to drink it out of the pitcher ... I'm afraid ... but I'll pour out about two teaspoonfuls for each of us...." She poured an inch of water into a tiny gla.s.s. "You first, Carter."

"No," said Carter, "I'm not going to touch it. It's for you and the Kings."

"Carter! You're wonderful!" She drank her pitiful portion in three sips.

"There ... now you, please, Cartie! Just one swallow!"

But Carter shook his head. "No; I don't need it. Shall I take this to Mrs. King?"

"Yes." Her sad eyes knighted him.

Carter took the pitcher of water to Mrs. King without touching a drop of it and helped her to strain the fern bits out of it through a handkerchief before she began to give it to her husband in spoonfuls.

With the first sip he ceased his uneasy murmuring and she smiled up at the boy. "Thank you, Carter. It's very splendid of you. Won't you take a sip for yourself?"

Carter said he did not need it.

"You do look fresher, really. You've stood this thing extraordinarily well. Did you give Honor some?"

"She would take only a taste."

Madeline King's eyes filled. "This is a black night for her, Carter. The thirst--and the _insurrectos_--are the least of it for Honor."

Carter's eyes were bleak. "But she had to know it some time. She had to find it out, sooner or later. She couldn't have gone on with it, Mrs.

King."

She sighed. "I never was so astounded, so disappointed in all my life.

One simply cannot take it in. He has been so absolutely steady ever since he came down,--and so fine all through this trouble! And to fail us now, when we need him so,--with Honor in such danger--" She gave her husband the last of the water and then laid on his forehead the damp handkerchief through which she had strained it. "It will break his uncle's heart. He was no end proud of him."

"She had to know it some time," said Carter, stubbornly. "Is there anything I can do, Mrs. King?"

"Nothing, Carter."

"Then I'll go back to Honor."

Something in his expression, in the way his dry lips said it, made the woman smile pityingly. "Carter, I--I'm frightfully sorry for you, too."

He drew himself up with something of the old concealing pride. "I'm quite all right, thank you."

She was not rebuffed. "You are quite all wretched," she said, "you poor lad, and I'm no end sorry, but--Carter, don't think this ill wind of Jimsy's will blow you any good."

He flushed hotly through his strained pallor.

"Ah," said the Englishwoman, gently, "you were counting on it. It's no good, Carter. It's no good. Not with Honor Carmody."

Carter did not answer her in words but there was angry denial in the tilt of his head as he limped away, and she looked after him sadly.

He found Honor limply relaxed in a long wicker chair. "Carter," she whispered, "I wish I'd asked you to give Jimsy a taste of that water."

"You think he deserves it?" He couldn't keep the sneer out of his voice.

"No," she answered him honestly. "I don't think he deserves it ... but he needs it."

The words repeated themselves over and over in the other's mind. He didn't deserve it, but he needed it. That was the way--the weak, sentimental, womanish way in which she would reason it out about herself, he supposed ... Jimsy King didn't deserve her, but he needed her. He was deep in his bitter reflections when he realized that she was speaking to him.

"Cartie, I must tell you how fine I think you are! You were splendid ...

about the water ... not taking any ... when I know how you're suffering." She had to speak slowly, and if Stephen Lorimer had stood out in the hall he would never have recognized his Top Step's voice. "Of course we believe help is coming ... that we'll be safe in a few hours ... but because we may not be ... this is the time for telling the truth, isn't it, Carter? I want to tell you ... how I respect you....

Once I said you were weak, when I was angry at you.... But now I know you're strong ... stronger than--Jimsy ... with the best kind of strength. I want you to know that I know that, Carty."

"_Honor_!" The truth and the lie spun round and round in his aching head; he _was_ stronger than Jimsy King; he hadn't made a drunken beast of himself; suppose he had taken the first sip of the water?--He hadn't taken it all. He was a better man than Jimsy King. He made a swift motion toward her, saying her name brokenly in his choked voice, but he crumpled suddenly and slid from his chair to the floor and was still.

Honor flew to the foot of the stairs and called Mrs. King. "Carter has fainted! Will you help me?"

Mrs. King called the Mexican guard in from the porch to lift him to the couch, and she and the girl fanned him and chafed his thin wrists. When he came to himself he was intensely chagrined. "I'm all right," he said impatiently, sitting up. "I wish you wouldn't bother."

"Lie still for a bit," said Mrs. King. "You've had a nasty faint."

Honor saw his painful flush. "Cartie, it's no wonder you fainted,--I feel as if I might, any minute. And I did nearly faint once, didn't I, Mrs. King? The day I arrived here--remember?" She remembered all too keenly herself ... the instant of relaxed blackness that followed on the sound of Richard King's hearty voice--"Why, the boy's all right!

Ab-so-lutely all right! Isn't he, Madeline? Steady as a clock. That college nonsense--" And the contrast between that day of faith triumphant and this dark night was so sharp and cruel that she could not talk any more, even to comfort Carter. They were all silent, so that they clearly heard the unlocking, the opening, the closing of the door of Jimsy's room, and then a step--a swift, sure step upon the stair.

Then Yaqui Juan walked into the _sala_.