The Knave of Diamonds Part 74

"I can't sleep. It's no use. I was only pretending." Lucas stifled a sigh of weariness. "Sit down," he said.

But Nap stood over him and laid steady hands upon his wrists. His hold was close and vital; it pressed upon the pulses as if to give them new life. "You can sleep if you try," he said.

Lucas shook his head with a smile. "I'm not a good subject, Boney. Thanks all the same!"

"Try!" Nap said insistently.

But the blue eyes remained wide. "No, old chap. It's too high a price to pay--even for sleep."

"What do you mean?" There was a fierce note in the query, low as it was; it was almost a challenge.

Lucas answered it very quietly. "I mean that I'm afraid of you, Boney."

"Skittles!" said Nap.

"Yes, it may seem so to you; but, you see, I know what you are trying to do."

"What am I trying to do?" demanded Nap.

Lucas paused for a moment; he was looking straight up into the harsh face above his own. Then, "I know you," he said. "I know that you'll get the whip hand of me if you can, and you'll clap blinkers on me and drive me according to your own judgment. I never had much faith in your judgment, Boney. And it is not my intention to be driven by you."

There was no resentment in the tired voice, only unflagging determination.

Nap's hold slowly relaxed. "You don't trust me then?"

"It's your methods I don't trust, dear fellow, not your motives. I'd trust them to perdition."

"But not my--honour?" Nap's lips twisted over the word.

Lucas hesitated. "I believe you would be faithful to your own code," he said at length.

"But you don't consider that to trick a man who trusted me would be against that code?"

Again Lucas hesitated, and in the silence Nap straightened himself and stood waiting, stern, implacable, hard as granite.

"Don't do violence to yourself," he said cynically.

On the instant Lucas spoke, in his voice a tremor that was almost pa.s.sionate. "Boney--Boney, old chap, have I wronged you? G.o.d knows I've tried to be just. But are you straight? Are you honest? I'd give my soul to be able to trust you. Only--dear fellow, forgive me--I can't!"

Nap's hands clenched. "Why not?" he said.

"Because," very slowly and painfully Lucas made reply, "I know that you are trying to blind me. I know that you are sacrificing yourself--and another--in order to deceive me. You are doing it to save me pain, but--before G.o.d, Boney--you are torturing me in the doing far more than you realise. I'd sooner die ten times over than endure it. I can bear most things, but not this--not this!"

Silence followed the words, a silence that was vital with many emotions.

Nap stood upright against the lamplight. He scarcely seemed to breathe, and yet in his very stillness there was almost a hint of violence. He did not attempt to utter a word.

Lucas also lay awhile without speaking, as if exhausted. Then at length he braced himself for further effort. "It seems to me there's only one way out, Boney," he said gently. "It's no manner of use your trying to deceive me any longer. I happen to know what brought you back, and I'm thankful to know it. After all, her happiness comes first with both of us, I guess. That's why I was so almighty pleased to see you in the first place. That's why it won't hurt me any to let her go to you."

Nap made a sharp movement and came out of his silence. "Luke, you're mad!"

"No, Boney, no! I'm saner than you are. When a fellow spends his life as I do, he has time to look all round things. He can't help knowing. And I'm not a skunk. It never was my intention to stand between her and happiness."

"Happiness!" Harshly Nap echoed the word; he almost laughed over it.

"Don't you know that she only tolerates me for your sake? She wouldn't stay within a hundred miles of me if it weren't for you."

"Oh, shucks, Boney!" A faint smile touched the worn face on the pillow.

"I know you hurt her infernally. But she will forgive you that--women do, you know--though I guess she would have forgiven you easier if she hadn't loved you."

"Man, you're wrong!" Fiercely Nap flung the words. "I tell you there is no love between us. I killed her love long ago. And as for myself--"

"Love doesn't die," broke in Lucas Errol quietly. "I know all about it, Boney. Guess I've always known. And if you tell me that your love for Anne Carfax is dead, I tell you that you lie!" Again he faintly smiled.

"But I don't like insulting you, old chap. It's poor sport anyway.

Besides, I'm wanting you. That's why--"

He stopped abruptly. A curious change had come over Nap, a change so unexpected, so foreign to the man's grim nature, that even he, who knew him as did none other, was momentarily taken by surprise. For suddenly, inexplicably, Nap's hardness had gone from him. It was like the crumbling of a rock that had withstood the clash of many tempests and yielded at last to the ripple of a summer tide.

With a sudden fierce movement he dropped down upon his knees beside the bed, flinging his arms wide over his brother's body in such an agony of despair as Lucas had never before witnessed.

"I wish I were dead!" he cried out pa.s.sionately. "I wish to Heaven I had never lived!"

It was a cry wrung from the very depths of the soul, a revelation of suffering of which Lucas had scarcely believed him capable. It opened his eyes to much that he had before but vaguely suspected.

He laid a hand instantly and very tenderly upon the bowed head. "Shucks, Boney!" he remonstrated gently. "Just when you are wanted most!"

A great sob shook Nap. "Who wants me? I'm nothing but a blot on the face of creation, an outrage, an abomination--a curse!"

"You're just the biggest thing in that woman's life, dear fellow,"

answered the tired voice. "You hang on to that. It'll hold you up, as G.o.d always meant it should."

Nap made an inarticulate sound of dissent, but the quiet restraint of his brother's touch seemed to help him. He became still under it, as if some spell were upon him.

After a time Lucas went on in the weary drawl that yet held such an infinite amount of human kindness. "Did you think I'd cut you out, Boney?

Mighty lot you seem to know of me! It's true that for a time I thought myself necessary to her. Maybe, for a time I was. She hadn't much to live for anyway. It's true that when you didn't turn up in Arizona I left off expecting you to be faithful to yourself or to her. And so it seemed best to take what she gave and to try to make her as happy as circ.u.mstances would allow. But I never imagined that I ruled supreme. I know too well that what a woman has given once she can never give again. I didn't expect it of her. I never asked it. She gave me what she could, and I--I did the same for her. But that bargain wouldn't satisfy either of us now.

No--no! We'll play the game like men--like brothers. And you must do your part. Believe me, Boney, I desire nothing so earnestly as her happiness, and if when I come to die I have helped to make this one woman happy, then I shall not have lived in vain."

Nap turned his head sharply. "Don't talk of dying! You couldn't die! And do you seriously imagine for a single instant that I could ever give her happiness?"

"I imagine so, dear fellow, since she loves you."

"I tell you she wouldn't have me if I asked her."

"You don't know. Anyway, she must have the chance. If she doesn't take it, well, she isn't the woman I imagine her to be."

"She's a saint," Nap said, with vehemence. "And you, Luke,--you're another. You were made for each other. She would be ten million times happier with you. Why do you want her to marry a blackguard?"

A shadow touched Lucas Errol's face, but it was only for an instant; the next he smiled. "You are not a blackguard, Boney. I always said so. And the love of a good woman will be your salvation. No, you're wrong. I couldn't give her real happiness. There is only one man in the world can give her that. And I--am not that man." He paused; his eyelids had begun to droop, heavily. "Say, Nap, I believe I could sleep now," he said.

"Yes, yes, old chap, you shall." Nap raised himself abruptly, banishing his weakness in a breath; only a certain unwonted gentleness remained.

"You shall," he said again. "Guess you won't be afraid now you have got your own way. But just one thing more. You'll be wanting all your strength for yourself for the next few weeks. Will you--for my sake if you like--put all this by till you are winning out on the other side? She would say the same, if she knew."