The Long Lane's Turning Part 32

It was upon this spectacle that the agitated steward had come, called by a frightened bell-boy, and as the theatre stood opposite, he had hastily sent thither, as the likeliest spot in which to find some _habitue_ of the Club who might a.s.sume charge of the situation.

Two other club-members stood nonplussed and disconcerted on the threshold of the room when Harry Sevier and Brent entered, with the steward behind them. In the livid face of the boy at bay, the staring distempered eyes, the gripped, impromptu weapon, Harry read the fact.

He spoke to him soothingly, but the frenzied brain did not recognise him. To Chilly's imagination the friendly, familiar faces took on the baleful character of the gibbering things by which he was beset. He sprang up, slashing frantically with the iron, panting indistinguishable words. Thus for a moment the writhing images fell back--only one of the iron lizards that formed the andirons suddenly came to life and on bat's-wings soared to a great marble bust that sat on a shelf above the fireplace, where it perched and spat down at him.

Chilly leaped up at it, dealing it blow after blow with the poker--then laughed wildly to see it suddenly waver and topple forward. So it seemed to him, but an exclamation of dismayed warning broke from Harry's lips; it was the heavy marble itself, its too frail support shattered by the attack, which was falling. He sprang forward.

But he reached the spot too late. The great bust came crashing from its height full upon Chilly's breast, and with a choked cry he went down beneath it.

The others rushed to him and between them the ma.s.sive stone was lifted from the broken body. "Call up a doctor," Harry ordered the steward.

"Get the nearest--tell him to hurry; Mr. Allen is badly hurt." To the rest he said, "Nothing must be known, as to how this happened, outside this room. It was an accident, remember, nothing more. The shelf was weak and the bust fell."

When the doctor came in, the crushed form lay upon a couch hastily improvised from chair-cushions. Blood was welling from the pale lips.

He made a hasty examination, then looked up and shook his head.

"Better fetch his father and mother," he said, "and as quickly as possible."

"I will go," volunteered Brent. "My car is at the theatre. I can do it in twenty minutes." He went out quickly, while the man of medicine opened his case and busied himself with restoratives.

To Harry, who stood watching with the others, it seemed that these were to be of no avail, but after a sensible interval Chilly opened his eyes. He gazed at the professional face so near--at the other shocked countenances grouped about. He saw the bust lying on its side.

"I'm--sober now," he gasped. "I was--seeing things, eh? But I seem to be--hurt. What's the matter?"

"The marble fell and struck you," said Harry.

A spasm of pain caught Chilly and he groaned. "I remember," he said, and then, after a pause, "Am I--badly off?"

"I'm afraid so," said the doctor.

The pity in the tone conveyed its message. A tremor ran over Chilly's face. There was a long moment's silence.

"Have I--much time?"

"Not very much," answered the other gently.

Chilly caught a breath that was half a sob. "Poor little Nancy!" he whispered.

He looked up at the men who stood about him, "I would like--" he said, hesitatingly but clearly, "I would be glad if some--explanation might be made of this--occurrence--which would not involve unnecessary pain to the d.u.c.h.ess. Perhaps that is--impossible. But I would--be grateful--"

One of the younger men leaned beside him. It was Lee Carter, his closest friend, who had brought him that afternoon from the Springs.

"Dear old chap!" he said, brokenly. "I was standing just under it.

You saw it topple and jumped to save me! That is how it happened!

Every one of us saw it."

A wan smile touched the whitening lips, "Gentlemen all!" said Chilly, and closed his eyes.

He lay silent then--he was breathing with increasing difficulty. At length there was the sound of a motor halting outside, and Harry and the rest went out.

In the quiet of the room the door opened upon Judge and Mrs. Allen.

She was deadly pale, her face frozen with anguish. She knelt beside the prostrate figure and took the cold hand of her son in hers.

"Chilly!" she cried. "My poor, poor boy!"

His eyes opened. He seemed, in that last fading instant, to see only her. "d.u.c.h.ess!" he whispered, and with the word the light died in his face. "d.u.c.h.ess!"

Mrs. Allen looked at the Judge's quivering countenance with dull blank eyes, that saw two great tears suddenly detach themselves and roll down his pale cheeks. He took a step toward her.

"Charlotte--" he stammered. "Charlotte!"

There was in the shaking voice something that pierced her agony, a tone that she had not heard on his lips for many, many long years--an echo of accents that she had known when she was a bride. She gazed at him an instant voicelessly.

Then all at once her face broke up and a wild cry tore itself upward from her heart. It was not the voice now of cold and placid scorn, but that of the real woman--the eternal voice of Rachel weeping for her children. The sword of overwhelming tragedy had stripped off the protecting cicatrice of pride and arrogant resentment and bared the lonely soul beneath, that in this shuddering instant groped wildly for human comfort.

The Judge bent down and clasped her, and there, above the body of Chilly, for the first time since the son who lay dead before them had been born, she lay in her husband's arms, her face turned against his breast.

CHAPTER XLI

DARK DAYS

"If I only knew!" That was Echo's mental cry in the long days that followed Chilly's burial. "If I only knew whether Harry cared for me any longer!" Sharp as was her grief for her brother, this pang was the sharper, and it did not dull with time.

After the meeting in the corridor of the Convention Hall, when the barrier had risen, so icily cold, between them, she had been unable to blame him. The very depth of his hurt and resentment only showed her how much he had once cared, and she had longed fiercely for an opportunity of speech with him, which, it seemed to her, must set all right. This opportunity she had discerned in Brent's invitation to the theatre, since he had let fall that he had asked Harry also. She had known the character of the play to be presented and otherwise would have shrunk from the painful memories it must evoke, even though her personal dread had been exercised by the escape from prison of the convict from whose plight had come her own pain of conscience. But the possibility of Harry's presence had outweighed other considerations.

In that moment in the box, when his lips had spoken her name, when she had felt his hand tremble against her arm, the ice had seemed about to melt in understanding. For an instant her heart had leaped up with glad certainty, only to drop to anguished slowness again at his sudden stricken silence.

"If I only knew!" Through the months of the early summer the question sat incarnate by Echo's side. By night and by day it never left her.

She had no confidant, could have none. From this trouble her father himself was barred. It was some relief that she had no longer to wear a smiling motley, but could give her grief free rein, and there were times when she wept till the very fount of her tears seemed to be exhausted--when it seemed to her that all her life was darkened and her love lay stark with its death-tapers licking the gloom.

As time wore on, and her father threw himself again into the work of the political campaign, she was mentally more alone than ever. There were few of those old hours when she had been used to sit with him in the dusky library; for this room had become, gradually, the habitual meeting-place of the leaders, the clearing-house of county news, the forum in which were discussed and decided the varying policies of the struggle. Occasionally Harry took part in these gatherings--not often, for he was now away during long periods, speaking in various parts of the state. By the newspapers Echo followed his every step. He made no speech that she did not read with eagerness and pride. She knew that he was making a whirlwind campaign that had steadily increased in vigour and effect as the day of election drew nearer, and that, however the issues might fall, he was stamping his individuality deeply upon a wide community. She thrilled with the thought of his success, and in the unselfishness of her love, this was some recompense.

She found a kind of comfort, too, in the realisation that the relations of her father and mother had subtly altered. In her whole life she had never witnessed the smallest discourtesy of word or deed between them, yet there was now a positive element in their intercourse which she had never distinguished. Often now they sat together as the Judge wrote or scanned his reports, sometimes he discussed with his wife the phases of the political situation and once--with what Echo realised afterward was almost a guilty start--she had come upon them sitting in the lamplight hand in hand. She had turned away to discover that her eyes had unaccountably filled with tears.

Most of all that sustained her spirits in this period were her talks with Brent. Trained newspaperman and observer as he was, he had thrown himself into the battle with all ardour. Day after day, in trenchant editorials, he preached the Gospel of the new party, and many times he swung his long legs down the Avenue for a cup of tea at Midfields. His admiration for the fight Harry was making was immense and he found in Echo a perfect listener, sympathetic and comprehending.

And so the months pa.s.sed till there remained but a fortnight before election day, and so deeply had Echo's imagination entered into the great issue, so intimately were all her thoughts engaged with Harry's tangible success, that even the dread of Craig's recovery, even the pain and puzzle of her heart, were thrust into the background.

That evening she sat at the piano in the drawing-room, her fingers wandering in long dreamy _arpeggios_, when her maid brought her a letter. It was from Nancy Eveland. She opened and read it through, to the postscript on the last page:

"The evening papers have a telegram from Buda-Pesth about Mr. Craig.

He left the hospital there yesterday. The operation was completely successful."

She sat for some minutes with the paper held tight in her hand, with a weird feeling that it was a warning, and when she tried again to play her fingers stumbled into discord.

It was long before she slept that night, and then the fear swooped upon her in her dreaming. She thought it was her wedding-day and that she was pacing up a church aisle, over rose-leaves red as blood strewn with seed-pearls that had been her tears. Turned toward her were the faces of her father and mother, of Chilly and of a myriad friends, who filled every pew. At the altar Harry was standing waiting for her. But every countenance wore a look of astonishment and trepidation, and she knew that it was because the gown she was wearing was not white but black, and her bride's veil of black crepe. This, however, had been necessary because she had wished that Craig would die, and the wish had somehow brought his death about. She thought she tried to explain this, in a whisper, to Harry, but he shrank from her. She turned to the rector, who had been ready, but as she looked at him, he took off his surplice and dashed it on the floor, and she saw that he was really Craig himself. Then the organ crashed and lights flared up about her and Harry vanished and all that was left was Craig's face, sneering at her, with a red blotch on his temple.