The Wall Between Part 25

"It's awfully good of you. But please, if you mind coming, don't; for indeed I----"

"You ain't your aunt," a.s.serted Martin with a shy glance into her face.

Lucy met the glance with a blush and a whimsical smile.

"No, I'm not," she responded, "and sometimes I wish you weren't your father and your grandfather."

"What do you mean?"

"Because if you were just _you_, you'd be more forgiving--I know you would."

She saw him bite his lips and a dull red tinge his cheek. Without answering he turned into the long avenue and presently drew up before the side door.

"There you are!" he remarked stiffly.

Lucy did not need to look at him to sense that the kindliness had left his countenance, and his jaw had become grim and set.

Had she been able to read his thoughts, she would have realized that the short detour into Ellen Webster's territory had brought Martin to himself, and that he was already deploring with inward scorn the weakness that had led him to do the thing he had pledged his word never to do. He could not even shunt off the blame for his act and say, as did his ill.u.s.trious ancestor: "The woman tempted me and I did eat." No, he had open-eyed stalked voluntarily into temptation,--willingly, gladly, triumphantly. He had sinned against his conscience, his traditions, his forbears, and behold, angry as he was with himself for yielding to it, the sin was sweet.

CHAPTER XII

THE TEST

Martin had guided his horse round the triangle of sweet-williams and, still torn by conflicting emotions of ecstasy and self-reproach, was proceeding down the driveway when a cry of distress reached his ear:

"Martin--Mr. Howe!"

He turned to see Lucy Webster beckoning frantically to him from the door.

"Come back, please," she cried. "Hurry!"

That she was excited was evident. Indeed she must have been quite out of her mind to have called him Martin in that shameless fashion. The fact that the name had slipped so spontaneously from her lips and that she hastened to correct her mistake caused the man to speculate with delight as to whether she was wont to think of him by this familiar cognomen. This thought, however, was of minor importance, the flash of an instant. What chiefly disturbed Martin was the girl's agitation.

Bringing his horse to a stop, he sped back to where she was standing, and on reaching her side he was startled to see that the face but a short interval before so radiant had blanched to a deathly pallor.

"My aunt!" she whispered in a frightened tone. "Something terrible has happened to her!"

If Lucy entertained any doubts as to whether he would aid her in the present emergency she had either cast them aside or was determined to ignore such a possibility, for she held the door open with the obvious expectation that he would follow her into the house.

A year ago, a month, nay--a week, he would never have consented to cross the Webster threshold, let alone offer any a.s.sistance to its mistress; but the siren who beckoned him on had cast such a potent spell over his will that now without open protest, although with a certain inward compunction, he followed her through the hall into the kitchen.

Upon the floor was stretched Ellen Webster--crumpled, helpless, inert--her eyes closed and her stern face set as in a death mask. How long she had lain there it was impossible to tell. If she had called for succor it had been to empty walls.

As with mingled sensations Martin stood looking down upon her unconscious form, Lucy threw herself upon her knees beside the woman and gently touched her wrists and heart.

"She isn't dead," she murmured presently. "She must either have had a fall or some sort of shock. We must get her upstairs and send for a doctor."

The "_we_" told Martin that the girl had not even considered the chance of his refusing to come to her a.s.sistance.

"Tony is in the village," she went on, "and I don't know what I should have done but for you. How fortunate that you were here!"

Was it fortunate? Martin asked himself.

At last the moment for which he had longed and prayed had come,--the moment when the fate of his enemy lay in his hands, and it was within his power to grant or deny succor. There had never been a question in his mind what he would do should this opportunity arise. Had he not declared over and over again that Ellen Webster might die before he would lift a finger to help her? He had meant it too. All the bitterness of his soul had gone into the vow. And now here he was confronted by the very emergency he had craved from Fortune. The woman he hated was at his mercy. What should he do? Should he stand stanchly by his word and let her life go out into the Beyond when he might perhaps stay its flight? Or should he weakly repudiate his word and call her from the borderland to continue to taunt and torment him? If a doctor were not summoned quickly she might die, and her death be upon his soul. Did he wish to stain himself with this crime,--for crime it would be. Was the revenge worth the hours of self-condemnation that might follow? Who was he that he should judge Ellen Webster and cut off her life before its time? Vengeance is mine: I will repay, saith the Lord.

The phrase rang insistently in Martin's ears. He tried to stifle it--ignore it--but still the a.s.sertion continued to repeat itself within his consciousness. Suppose, tempted by his weaker nature and the appealing eyes of Lucy, he were to yield to his better self and adopt a merciful att.i.tude, might not Ellen be restored to health and jeer at him to the end of his days for his magnanimity? Hers was not the creed "If thine enemy hunger." She would call him coward and accuse him of a feeble, intimidated will. Were the case to be reversed, she would never curb her hatred to prolong his existence; of that he was certain. He could see her now bending over him, her thumb turned down with the majestic fearlessness of a Caesar. She would term her act justice, and she would carry out the sentence without a tremor.

But now that the same chance had come to him, and he saw the old woman stretched before him, her thin white hair snowy against the wooden flooring, a vague pity stirred in his heart. Death must come to us all sometime; but how tragic to have its approach unheralded, granting not an instant in which to raise a prayer to Heaven. No, he could not let his worst foe go down to the grave thus. He was the captain of his own soul, but not of Ellen Webster's.

He glanced up to find Lucy's gaze fixed upon him. There was horror and anguish in her eyes, and he realized that she had read aright the temptation that a.s.sailed him. She did not speak, she seemed scarcely to breathe: but the pleading face told him that should he yield to his darker pa.s.sions and show no pity, she would forever loathe him for his cruelty. Plainly as he saw this, however, it was not to her silent entreaty that he surrendered. Something deeper than love was calling him.

"Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not charity----" How persistently the sentences came to him! They seemed to echo from out his memory--in his mother's voice--the voice of a vanished past. She had taught him the words when he was a boy, and he had not thought of them since. Why did they now surge into his mind to weaken his resolve and cause him to waver in his intention? He wished he could get away from Lucy's eyes and the sight of the woman upon the floor. Had his mother lived, she might sometime have been as frail as this and had hair as white. A sob broke from him, and he stooped over his fallen foe.

"Where do you want I should carry her?" he asked, raising the limp body in his arms.

Lucy did not answer at once, and when she did her reply was unsteady.

"The room is at the head of the stairs," she said, struggling to speak in her customary tone. "Maybe I'd better go first."

The hushed intimacy of the tragedy suddenly brought the man and the woman very close together.

She led the way and he followed with his helpless burden. The form he bore was not heavy. In fact, it was so fragile that it seemed impossible that it could harbor so much venom and hatred.

Ellen Webster was, after all, nothing but an old, old woman. Perhaps, he reflected, in a wave of regret, he should have realized this and made allowance for it. Then a reaction from his tense emotion swept over him, and he thought with amus.e.m.e.nt how angry she would be should she suddenly regain consciousness and find herself within his grasp.

But she did not come to herself, and when he laid her on the bed that Lucy had prepared, she was still as unmindful of his touch as she would have been had the spirit within her really taken flight.

Martin did not linger now. His decision was made.

"I'll step over home an' get the other horse an' team, an' fetch the doctor back," he said quietly.

"I wish you would."

She did not thank him, accepting the favor with the simplicity of a weaker nature that leans unabashed on a stronger. Her dependence and her confession of it thrilled him with pleasure. She heard him creep cautiously down over the stairs and go out at the side door.

Then she turned her attention to making more comfortable the helpless woman upon the bed. When at length there was nothing more she could do, she sat down to wait the doctor's coming. The time dragged on. It seemed an eternity before help came.

In the meantime Ellen lay immovable as she had done from the first, her hard, sharp-cut features harder and more sharply defined in their pallor than the girl had realized them to be. In the furrowed brow, the deep-set eyes, the pitiless mouth there was not one gentle line which death could borrow to soften the stamp with which revenge and bitterness had branded her. So she would look in her coffin, Lucy thought with awe. Majesty might come into her face in the last great moment; but it would be the majesty of hate, not of love.

What a sad, sad ending to a life!

As the girl sat thinking of the friendless, isolated existence of the woman before her, she wondered idly what her aunt would have been, if, while her nature was still plastic, she had married and sacrificed her ego in years of service for others. Ah, she would never then have come to this lonely, embittered old age! Children would have prattled at her knee, and their children would have made glad the silent house. How full of joy and opportunity such an existence would have been!

But these blessings, alas, had not been granted Ellen. Perhaps it had been her own fault. She may deliberately have thrust the gentle visitant, Love, from her dwelling, and once repulsed he may never have sought again for entrance.