Trusia Part 26

"I was insane, Carrick, old chap," he said brokenly, as he drew his hand heavily across his aching brow. "I thought they had done for you." A sob choked him, caused by the recollection of the dream the fellow had urged as a reason for accompanying his master. The tables had turned bitterly against him.

Looking with that affection in his eyes that sometimes does exist between men, Carrick saw the thought with the weird prescience of the dying. "Dreams go by contraries, sir," he said and attempted a laugh.

"But it might have been Her Grace, Carrick, old man. You have saved her life." He grasped the fast chilling hand and wrung it fervently.

"Her Grace is safe, then?"

Carter striving busily to stanch half a score of wounds, nodded affirmatively.

"It's my last sc.r.a.p, sir," the c.o.c.kney said simply.

"Nonsense. We'll pull you through." Carter lied manfully, but the other shook his head in resignation to the inevitable.

"She's a lydey--you understand--but would it be too great a shock--to 'er--for me to speak to 'er--before--before--I croak?" he stammered wistfully.

"I'll get her, old man." Gently he lifted the wounded Carrick, carried him to where, aside from the road, a bed of moss made a more comfortable pillow for the stricken red head, then, with a sigh, he set out to bring Trusia. Roweling deep, he raced with Death to bring a woman's solace to a dying man.

XXII

CARRICK IS KING

"Where is Carrick?" Her question came from the thick copse in which she was concealed. "You have had news, I know," she said, stepping into view and glancing searchingly into his troubled countenance. "Is he wounded?"

He could have gathered her into his arms and kissed her as she stood before him, but that the very air seemed charged with impending disaster. As gently as brevity would permit, he told her of Carrick's fate. Together they rode swiftly back to where Carrick lay, fighting his last triumphant adversary, Death himself.

"No Lunnon sights to see," he muttered in his delirium; "no concert songs to'ear.... Ah, Meg, you was cruel 'ard on poor Tod, but d.a.m.n you, I loves you still."

"A woman betrayed him," she said. Carter nodded a grim a.s.sent. Her lips quivered. Her eyes brimmed to the brink with priceless womanly sympathy.

"Perhaps," she said rising and turning away, "perhaps he wouldn't care for us to know."

Carter drew her back gently. "I don't think he would mind--if you knew.

Poor chap, his has certainly been a hard fate."

Responding to the appeal in their hearts, which penetrated the numbing faculties, Carrick, in one final effort, threw off the shackles of Death and stood free for a season. His eyes opened at first without recognition for the pair bending over him. Then a gradual joy warmed the cooling embers of his life.

"'Ighness," he cried; the neighborhood of Death stripped his speech to its native crudeness. "'Ighness, a man carries to 'is grave the face of one woman in 'is 'eart. Hi knows that much to me sorrow. Captain, 'ere, beggin' your pardon, loves you, but daren't sye so for fear of 'Is Majesty. You don't love the King, you love Captain Carter. G.o.d bless 'im, 'e's the best man ever breathed. For Gawd's sake, 'Ighness, don't let 'im carry your sweet face to the grave with 'im unless your love goes with hit. You two was made for each other."

As a blade loses its sharpness from continuous wear, so dulled the eyes of Carrick in his combat with Death. In the bitterness of his strife he struggled to his elbow. Who can tell of the range of one's soul or the might thereof? On the brink of Eternity, Life wrestled with Death. The body was to be bared of the soul. Was the soul to be stripped of the a.s.sociations it had formed in this existence? Might it not also strive for a continuance of its ent.i.ty even as the man struggled for further living? Does the soul return to a nebulous state without further initiate perceptions after a life--a span--of activity? Was it merely recollections, or did his desperate spirit revisit the route of its life in a fruitless flight from Death? His voice came from far away, and what he said showed that he was at least living over the older days.

"Yes, Meg, Hi loves you. There hisn't a king, girl, has Hi would change plyces with for you.... Posies for yer winder. Let 'em grow, till we've other posies in our 'ome. Yer blushin', Meg. Ha! Ha!... Oh, Gawd, me 'eart's broke.... Forget?... Hit's you, Doc Judson, as will look arter Captain Carter now. Good-bye, Doc.... Why, there's 'er face again. d.a.m.n you, Meg. Hi hates you, but Hi loves you.... Captain Carter.... Ah-h-h."

His struggle with Love, with Life, and with Death was over. With a long-drawn sigh of relief his spirit had pa.s.sed. His head was turned to the man who had befriended him.

Hand in hand, Trusia and Carter arose and stood over the pulseless form.

Trusia was the first to speak.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "DON'T LET 'IM CARRY YOUR SWEET FACE TO THE GRAVE WITH 'IM UNLESS YOUR LOVE GOES WITH IT"]

"We cannot leave him here, dear. Poor, poor Carrick," and she threatened to sob. Carter slipped his arm about her comfortingly. As though returning, birdlike, to its nest, her head cradled itself against his shoulder, her arm timidly sought his neck and for one brief second she was content.

"Come," he said almost brutally to dissipate the apathy which death had thrown upon them both. "I'll carry him." He a.s.sisted her to mount, then, Carrick in his arms, he scrambled into the saddle. As they swung at a gallop out of the woods, a shot whistled past his head.

"Are you hurt, dear?" she cried.

"No; these woods seem Russianized, though. Pray heaven the road is not,"

and with strained eyes to the front, with word and spur, they raced for the lane to the castle.

"Something is amiss, dear; I know; I feel it. Still no matter what it is," she said, turning and laying her hand with a trustful little movement upon his arm, "I have your love, my King." With one foot on the flat step of the castle entrance, as she said this Trusia turned to Carter, a world of capitulated love in her eyes. The wicket opened with a more ominous creak than was its wont, it seemed. The Sergeant thrust his s.h.a.ggy pate through the narrow opening in answer to their knock. On seeing who it was he stepped out to where he would have ample s.p.a.ce for the full salute he always gave Her Grace. Some perplexity on the simple face aroused her forebodings anew.

"What is it, Sergeant?" she inquired anxiously. "Who is here?"

"Can't make heads or tails of it, Your Grace; not that I have any right to, but one gets figuring on what is going on around him when he is idle. It must be very important, since Colonel Sutphen has been summoned from the frontier. Count Zulka has not arrived yet, but a courier was sent for him, too. His Majesty is also here, but it seems that Count Sobieska sent out all the orders. The courier from Paris arrived about an hour before the Privy Council was summoned. Then Josef was sent for.

Then, though kept in the office, he was put under arrest. Search has been made everywhere for Your Grace. My commands were to invite you to enter as soon as you could be found. I will announce you."

"You must come, also," the girl insisted, turning to Carter.

"But Carrick?" he objected, as he looked down at the lifeless figure in his arms.

"Bring him in," she replied. "Though too late to do him further service, Krovitch shall not forget his devotion and his sacrifice."

They opened and entered the door of Sobieska's office. A faint commotion heralded the sight of Carrick which Carter attributed to natural surprise; he had no idea that it held a deeper significance. He placed the blood-stained form upon a leather lounge, folding the hands across the breast. The pallid features seemed to have taken on a strange n.o.bility in death.

It needed but a scant glance to prove that something was wrong, an odd repression filled the air with a myriad silent surmises. Trusia's eyes were blazing. Then Carter, following their direction, noted that the Minister of Private Intelligence, against all etiquette, was seated calmly at his desk, while His Majesty was standing. Josef, at one corner of the room, was guarded by the pair of soldiers who had been placed to watch Carter and Carrick the day of their arrival. A strapping young fellow, pale and mud-splashed, a bandage about his head, his left arm in a sling, leaned heavily against the wainscoting.

As Trusia courtesied low to Stovik, Sobieska arose, a slight frown marking a thin line between his brows, to bow sadly in the direction of the body on the lounge. His back was deliberately turned upon the Parisian with such studied insolence of action that the d.u.c.h.ess could not permit it to pa.s.s unrebuked.

"The King!" she said.

There followed--silence. Stovik and the courier dropped to their knees with bowed heads. Sobieska, gloom encircled, stood with bent head and quivering lips. His sombre eyes were fixed upon the inanimate c.o.c.kney as though to this modern he would recall the miracle of Lazarus. Then out of the well of his woe, came his voice, deep, and grief-laden. In the simplicity of life's greatest emotion, he pointed toward the couch.

"The King?" he questioned, looking straight into Trusia's eyes now. "The King? Does not your blood--your common heritage--tell you that the King is dead? G.o.d rest His Majesty."

She turned from one to the other in total bewilderment; finally, as though trusting none other, she came to Carter for enlightenment. He had comprehended in a glance.

"What do they mean?" she begged plaintively. "My poor head is awhirl in all this gloom."

"Carrick is King," he answered. A single tear, a perfect pearl of pity, hung abashed upon her cheek.

"It is so," a.s.sented the Minister, as she awaited his confirmation.

Gradually her grief dried in the realization of the awful deception which had been practiced by some one on her country. The flame of her burning rage shot suddenly into sight.

"What treason brought him here, then?" she asked haughtily, pointing indignantly at Stovik.

The latter smiled deprecatingly, as Sobieska answered, "Part of a Russian plot, Highness, of which, so far as we can ascertain, this gentleman has been the innocent victim. It was by such a plan they sought to lure all the patriots within the boundaries of our land, then to draw their net about us. I pray G.o.d that we still have time."

"Who was it?" she inquired with lips white and drawn, and brow contracted.