The Dominant Dollar Part 47

"I know," echoed Roberts. "I've heard it."

"And then he went away. I sent him away. I couldn't stand any more then.

It seemed to me I'd go mad if I tried."

Although the room was warm, the girl was shivering; rising, Roberts lit the gas in the grate. But he said nothing, absolutely nothing.

Through wide-open eyes the girl watched him as he returned to his seat.

Involuntarily she threw out both arms in a gesture of impotency absolute.

"That's all," she completed, "except that I told him to return--if he felt he must. I've been expecting him every minute all day; antic.i.p.ating horrors. But I haven't heard a word."

It was the mystery at last, impersonate. Like a live presence it stood there between these two human beings in the room, holding them apart, and each in his separate place.

Not for a moment but for minutes this time they sat in silence. Neither thought of speaking commonplaces now, nor again of things intimate. The period for these was past; the present too compellingly vital. What the man was thinking he did not say nor reveal by so much as an expression.

He had given his word not to do so; and with Darley Roberts a promise was sacred. A question he did ask, though, at last.

"Wouldn't you like me to go and find out for certain, Elice?" he suggested. "I'll do so if you wish."

"No." It was almost a plea. "We'll find out soon, very soon, I'm positive. I'll know whatever he does. He's certain to tell me; and I wish you here if he comes. Besides, neither of us could do anything whatever to alter the inevitable, even if we tried. We must simply wait; it can't be much longer now."

Once more there was a long silence, ghastly in its dragging moments, and again broken by the man.

"I shan't trouble you to go through the argument again, Elice," he said, "or attempt to alter your decision, whatever it may be. I can't presume to judge another's soul. But, merely to know for certain: you've decided positively to marry him, if--" The sentence ended in silence and a gesture.

His companion did not answer, appeared almost not to hear.

"Tell me, please," repeated the man gently. "You may as well. It won't hurt either of us any more for you to say it--if you've so decided."

"Yes," answered the girl this time. "I've tried and tried to find an escape; but there is none." She pa.s.sed her hand over her throat as though the words choked her, but her voice was now steady. "His blood would be upon my head, always, if I could prevent and still let him go--down. G.o.d help you and me both, but I can't do otherwise!"

A moment longer Roberts sat still--fixedly still; he stood up, his great hands clenched until they were as white as the scar itself.

"I think I'd better go now," he said, "before Armstrong comes." The great shoulders of him were swelling and receding visibly with each breath. "I don't know, of course; but I fear to go pa.s.sive and unresisting to the stake myself, and to remain pa.s.sive and unresisting when I saw the same fire that was to be my fate touching you, scorching you slowly to death--and for a fault that was neither of your making nor mine, for which we are in no respect responsible--I'm afraid that is beyond me, Elice. I'd better go at once, before he comes."

"No." The girl, too, was on her feet facing him. "Please don't. You don't really mean what you just said."

"Don't I? You believe in miracles. I'm human and I'd throttle him if he came while I was here--and came as he came once before!"

"Stop! in pity. If it does happen he'll not be to blame; it will be because he can't help it. You're big and strong and he'll need you as well as me. Wait."

The man drew back a step, but his great jaw was set immovably.

"You can't realize what you're asking," he said. "Remember my conviction is not your conviction. I still believe that two predominate over one and that nature's law comes first. I'll go because it is your decision and final; but I can't change elemental things at command. Don't ask it or expect it, because it is impossible."

"It's not impossible, though," desperately. "Nothing is impossible with you."

Roberts' great head shook a negative.

"This is. I can't discuss it longer. Good-bye, Elice."

The girl's brown eyes followed him as, decisively now, he prepared to leave, and in hopeless, abject misery. She spoke one word.

"Darley," she said.

The listener halted, motionless as a figure in clay.

"Darley," repeated the girl; and again that was all.

"'Darley!'" It was the man's voice this time, but it sounded as though coming from a distance. "'Darley!' At last!--and now!"

"Darley," yet once again, "as I love you and you love me don't--desert me now!"

On the room fell a silence like death,--to those two actors worse than death; for it held thought infinite and complete realization at last of what might have been and was not; of what as well, unless a miracle intervened, could never be. In it they stood, each where he was, two figures in clay instead of one. Interrupting, awakening, torturing, sounded the thing they had so long expected; the impact of a step upon the floor of the porch without; a moment later another, uncertain, and another; a pause, and then, startlingly loud, the trill of an electric bell.

For an instant neither stirred. It was the expected; and still there is a limit to human endurance. The girl was trembling, in a nervous tension too great to bear longer. An effort indeed she made at control; but it was a pitiful effort and futile. In surrender absolute, abandon absolute, she dropped back into her seat, her arms crossed pathetically on the surface of the library table, her face buried from sight therein.

"Answer it, please," she pleaded. "I can't. I'm ashamed, unutterably; but I can't!"

Again the alarm of the bell sounded; curtly short this time and insistent.

Without a word or even a pause Darley Roberts obeyed. As he pa.s.sed out he closed the door carefully behind him.

Five minutes that seemed to the girl a lifetime dragged by. Listening, she heard the opening of the front door, the murmur of low, speaking voices,--a murmur ceasing as abruptly as it began; then, wonder of wonders, the door closed again with a snap and a retreating step sounded once, twice, as when it had come, on the floor of the porch. Following, she marked the even footfall of Roberts returning. The electric switch that he had turned on snapped back as he had found it, the intervening door opened, and he entered. But, strange to say, he did not pause or say a word. As one awakening from a dream and not yet wholly conscious, he returned silently to his former place. On his face was a look she had never seen before, which she could not fathom.

"Darley." Unbelieving the girl leaned toward him appealingly. "Tell me.

Wasn't it--he?"

The man looked at her then, and there was that in his gray eyes that tinged her face crimson.

"No. It was Harry Randall," he said. "It's all right, Elice. The miracle came."

"The miracle!" The voice was uncertain again, but from a far different cause this time. "Don't keep me waiting. Tell me. Is he--well?"

This time Roberts actually smiled,--smiled as he had not done before in months.

"Yes; and writing like mad! That's the miracle. He's been at it steady now for twenty hours, and won't even pause to eat. He sent for Harry to deliver the message. It's inspiration he's working under and he couldn't stop to come himself, wouldn't. He said to tell you, and me, that it was all right. He'd found himself at last. Those were his words,--he'd found himself at last." As suddenly as it had come the smile pa.s.sed, and Roberts stood up, his big hands locked behind his back.

"We've thought we understood him all these years," he said steadily, "but at last I realize that we haven't at all. It would be humorous if it hadn't been so near to tragedy, so very near. Anyway, it's clear now.

Harry Randall sees it too. That's why he wouldn't stay. Steve Armstrong never cared for you really at all, Elice. He thought he did--but he didn't. It was himself he cared for; and a fancy. Neither you nor I nor any one can change him or help him more than temporarily. We're free.

He'll stand or go under as it was written in the beginning." The voice lowered until it throbbed with the conviction that was in the speaker's soul. "No man alive who really cared could find inspiration where he found it. The world is before us and we're free, Elice, free!"

Unconsciously, in answer to an instinct she obeyed without reason, the girl too arose, an exaltation in her face no artist could reproduce nor words describe.

"Yes," she said. "I see it all too at last. We've all been blind." She caught her breath at the thought that would intrude, force it back as she would. "And still we came so near, so very, very near--"

"Yes; but it's past." The man opposite was advancing. Not the impa.s.sive, cold Darley Roberts the world knew, but the other Darley Roberts revealed to one alone; the isolate human alone and lonely. "But it's past, past, do you hear? And to-day is December the sixth, our anniversary--ours." He halted, waiting. He smiled, with a tenderness infinite. "Is it 'Darley'

still, Elice? Won't you come and say it again?"

THE END