The Open Question Part 45

"I see. The club's a rescue party."

"Something of the sort. She doesn't say much about it."

"Funny place, Paris."

"Yes; all kinds here."

Gano knew to the hour when the tide of his ill-luck and apathy had changed. His new interest in Mary Burne did not blind him to the fact that life had suddenly grown endurable, even attractive, _decent_ in his eyes, from the moment he had fully realized and fully accepted the fact that he was under no nightmare of obligation to go on with it. It was as if the noisome prison-house of his soul were flung open once and forever to the blessed life-giving air. No more misgiving, no more shrinking from the deep insecurity of things. He began to write with a new vigor and resiliency. There came into his work not only buoyancy, but a fine temper it had lacked before. The love of literature took hold on him again as it had done in those first years of awakening abroad. He came to care again about his own little performances, and by degrees did more and more work for the paper. The editor had several times complimented him warmly. Presently he was offered a regular position on the staff. He paid back Henri de Poincy in full, and would have moved into better quarters but for--but for--Driscoll, he would have said. Driscoll was still very ill--worse, indeed, than ever.

"Never could do anything well in a hurry," he repeated his dreary old quip. "Have patience, and I'll make a thorough job of this."

Gano felt more and more that whatever had been their relation in the past, Mary Burne was absorbed now, not by Driscoll, but by Driscoll's illness and dire need of her ministry. If she had not exactly encouraged, she certainly had not repelled, Gano's growing devotion. Her demeanor was perfect, he said to himself. How could she give her new lover a sign by the death-bed of the man who had adored her for years, who had befriended her, and who was in such need himself of befriending?

Gano schooled himself to keep the growing a.s.surance and victory out of his face and manner. He would follow Mary's lead, and when in the gray unpromising life of the sick-room they found some dumb way of communicating, some unasked aid to give, some slight unnoticed contact in the common service rendered, Gano would school his thrilling nerves to keep the secret of his gladness as calmly as Mary Burne kept hers.

As he grew worse, Driscoll grew more exacting, and more variable in temper. He had less and less compa.s.sion on his friends, and demanded Herculean labors of wakefulness--watching, reading aloud, etc. No invalid had ever a more comfortable confidence in the boundless strength and amiability of those who are well. Gano tried with scant success to save Mary from bearing the brunt of the sick man's exactions.

He hurried up-stairs to relieve the watch a little earlier than usual one evening.

"Once more I _appeal_ to you," he heard Driscoll saying, with raised voice, before the door was opened. The turning of the k.n.o.b had either drowned or prevented the reply. Driscoll lay breathing heavily, and Mary, with impa.s.sive face, was drawing on her gloves. She looked up and nodded to Gano.

"Good-bye," she said, after a moment. But on the threshold she stopped.

"d.i.c.k," she said, without turning to face Driscoll, "I think I won't come to-morrow."

"Yes, you will," he shouted. She turned and looked at him.

"Good-bye," was all she said.

"d.a.m.ned selfish women are!" Driscoll growled as the sound of her steps died.

"I shouldn't call her exactly a case in point," observed his friend.

"Well, she is. She sees how hopeless this is, and how d.a.m.nably I'm suffering, and she won't help me to get out of this cursed hole. _You_ won't either," he added, defiantly, and yet with a gleam of hope, almost lunatic in its cunning and its greed.

"I won't what?" said Gano.

"Get me some morphine, or fetch me a pistol, or light some charcoal."

"Lord, no! You'll be better yet, old man."

"Rot! and you know it; and so does she. But _she_ pretends to care, and yet she won't help me. d.a.m.ned selfish--d.a.m.ned selfish!" He turned over in bed, and went on cursing under the bedclothes.

Gano wondered how long the idea had been in his head, and how long Driscoll had worn a beard, and whether there was a razor in the dressing-case. He shuddered as he glanced surrept.i.tiously about. Wasn't it a little odd that he should find the notion so ghastly? Ah yes, the ugly violence of it! When the sick man got to sleep his friend rummaged his room from end to end, finding nothing to confiscate; and, after all, Driscoll had a fair night. The morning was gray. A fine drizzle shot spitefully down out of a leaden sky. Mary did not appear at the usual hour. Towards noon Gano went down to his own room, worn out, and flung himself on his bed without undressing. He was waked by the noise of a dull fall overhead. He sprang up in a horror of apprehension, broad awake on the instant. He rushed up-stairs and burst in on Driscoll, to find him angrily pushing books off the table on to the floor, as a summons to his friend below.

"You sleep like the dead," was his greeting. "Where's Mary?"

"Great Caesar! I don't know."

"My watch has run down," Driscoll went on, querulously.

Gano set it by his. It was five o'clock.

"Don't go to sleep again; let's have some coffee."

"All right," answered Gano, yawning. "I believe I'm hungry. I'll go and forage."

When he came back with the provisions he brought up some letters and papers. He tumbled everything down on the table. There was nothing for him but some proof from the office, and two letters from America, sent on by Monroe & Co.

"Birthday greetings from New Plymouth," he said to himself, as he recognized the familiar old-fashioned hand, the violet ink, and the brown five-cent stamp that had grown to seem foreign to him. He hadn't the curiosity to read birthday commonplaces till the impromptu meal was finished, and Driscoll had become a bore, asking him to look out and see if Mary wasn't coming, the only variation being, "Hark! isn't she on the stairs?"

It was only then that, turning the letters over, it occurred to him to doubt if the second was a cousinly salutation.

"No, by Jove! Boston postmark!"

He tore it open. A brief note from the legal firm of Bostwick & Allen, announcing the death of their client, Aaron Tallmadge, and the bare fact that his entire estate was left to his sole surviving heir and grandson, whose instructions they awaited. The letter had been to Nice and back.

It was nearly two weeks old.

"By Jove!" Gano dropped the letter on the table among the coffee-cups and bits of _brioche_.

"What! is she here?" Driscoll sat up in bed.

"No, no; I don't know. Listen to this." He read the letter aloud.

"_That's_ all right! _Mille felicitations!_ Look out, like a good fellow, and see if she isn't coming across the court."

Gano went over to the window and looked out with an ironic consciousness that, even in the face of such news, he was scarcely less concerned than Driscoll for the coming of that enigmatic woman across the lamplit, reeking court. The drizzle had turned into long gray rods of rain; they streaked the gaslight and p.r.i.c.ked the shallow pools unceasingly. And he had all that money! and it was just as he had always known it would be.

The essentials of existence were unchanged. Was she never coming? It's the child surviving somewhere in most men, he argued with himself, that gives a woman like that a charm beyond beauty. But she's beautiful, too, he protested silently. Aloud he said:

"No, I don't see her."

"Look here, Gano; do me a favor, old man! Go and fetch her."

"Oh, I hardly think--"

"I tell you I must see her! Only for five minutes. Tell her that. If I don't see her, I'll have a h.e.l.l of a night. I'd do as much for you, Gano."

"Oh, all right." He turned on his heel.

"Hold on! you don't know where she lives."

Gano knew perfectly, but he said, "Oh-h."

"Going off like that without--you're full of your millions! Small blame--small blame!" Driscoll wrote down the address and handed it to his friend. "Bring her back with you, if you can; but it'll do if she's here by ten."

Outside the court Gano hailed a _fiacre_ and drove barely five minutes before he was set down at a door in a tenement not conspicuously different from his own. A shabby man with long hair, wearing a velveteen jacket, had just stopped, closed his dripping umbrella, and rung.

When the door opened he pa.s.sed in without question.