Winding Paths Part 74

Since Hal told him, in a few, rather abrupt words, her story, he had scarcely looked at her. When she first entered his room so unexpectedly, his eyes had searched her face as if he would read instantly what she had come for?... what she had learnt?... Before hers, his gaze fell.

"I have come from Lorraine," she said, and he understood that she knew all.

A dull red crept over his face and neck, and then died away, leaving him of an ashy paleness. He was standing by his desk, and he reached out one hand and rested it on some books, gripping the backs of them with a grip that made his knuckles stand out like white knots. He did not ask Hal to sit down. Commonplace amenities died in the stress of the moment.

She stood in the middle of the room, very straight and very still. In a close-fitting travelling-dress she looked unusually slim, almost boyish, and something about her att.i.tude rather suggested a youthful knight, sword in hand, come with vengeance to the Transgressor. Yet, even in his shame and stunned perplexity, Hermon lost no shred of dignity.

He towered above her, with bend head, rigid, white face, grave, downcast eyes, and in spite of every reproach her att.i.tude seemed to hurl at him, het yet wore the look of n.o.bility that was his birtright.

"When do you think I should go?" he asked at last, with difficulty.

"We ought to cross to-night."

"To-night! - I - I - have a very important case to-morrow. It will not last long. It matters a great deal."

"I know," was the short, uncompromising answer.

He looked up with a swift glance of inquiry. Then he said quietly:

"Do you know that it may wreck my future to leave London to-night?"

"Yes," said Hal. "I know."

"And after all Lorraine did not help me to this hour of success, am I to throw away my chance?"

"Lorraine is dying. Her dying wish is to see you once more. Is it necessary to discuss anything else?"

Again there was silence between them - silence so intense, so poignant, it was like a live thing present in the room. Through the double windows came a far-off, m.u.f.fled sound of the traffic in the Strand, but it seemed to have nothing whatever to do with the life of that quiet room. It dit not disturb the silence, in which one could almost hear pulse-beats. It belonged to another world.

Once Alymer raised his head and looked hard into her face. In his eyes there was an expression of utter hopelessness. She had not spoken any word of reproach or scorn, yet everything about her as she stood there erect and pa.s.sionless, and without one grain of sympathy for his struggle, told him that, just as far as her natural broadness allowed her to condemn any one, she condemned him.

For a moment a sort of savage recklessness seized him. He felt suddenly he was stranded high-and-dry on a barren rock, with nothing at all any more in his world but his profession. He had lost all hope of ever winning Hal, which seemed to be all hope of anything worth having.

Nothing remained but the hollow interest of a great name, and the l.u.s.t of power. He had it in his mind for those brief, pa.s.sionate moments, because he had lost all else, to insist upon taking his chance.

Even one day's grace might save him. The trial would perhaps last not more than two, but in any case, a wire reaching him in the middle, which he could show to Sir Philip, might mean all the difference between success and failure. The wire could be worded to hide what was truly involved, and the plea of a life-and-death urgency would set him free without any awkward questioning.

He glanced up to speak, and once again Hal's att.i.tude arrested him.

She looked so young, so fresh, so true, so vaguely splendid, in spite of the rigid lips that seemed to have closed down tightly upon all she must have suffered in the last fort-eight hours.

She was not looking at him now, but, with her head thrown back a little, she gazed silently and fatefully at the clock on his mantelpiece.

And something about her called to him, with the calling of the great, mysterious things, a calling that shamed and scorned that spirit of savage recklessness; that swift, relentless l.u.s.t of power.

"What is anything in the world,' it seemed to cry, "compared to being true to one's friend; true to one's word; true to one's love?"

He saw suddenly that in any case success and triumph would bring him little enough to gladden his heart; that whichever way he turned was gloom and darkness; that in that gloom a possible ray of light still linger, if he could keep always the consciousness that, at the most critical hour of his life, he had rung true.

He raised his eyes suddenly, and straightened himself.

"What time does the next train leave?" he said. "I am coming."

CHAPTER XLIII

After Hal had left, Lorraine sank into a stupor from weakness, and remained thus until towards evening. Then she revived, and seemed to comprehend better all that had happened; all that was happening still.

She knew that the child she had dreamed of would never lie in her amrs and look up at her with Alymer's eyes. She knew that in the first awful moments of realisation, and deathly weakness, her whole soul had so craved to see Alymer again that she had asked for him.

A few moments later the stupor had come down upon her exhausted senses, and without any further word or thought from her, Hal had gone on her errand.

At first, in the darkened room where she had suffered so much, she remembered only that very soon Alymer might be with her. And the thought, while it quickened her pulses, yet made her feel almost faint with the longing for him to come quickly. What if they were delayed, and this terrible weakness took her away from him without a last meeting.

The thought that death was approaching did not frighten her. She rather welcomed it. When she left London in the summer, she had felt that she could never go back. She had already fixed in her mind the picture of the quiet haven, where she would live restfully with Alymer's child - far away from the turmoil that had marked her life almost from its earliest beginning, and safe from slander.

She dit not mind for herself. The things that most women valued, no longer held much meaning for her. She had experienced more than most; learned more than most how empty success and triumph may become; sounded for herself the shallowness of many things that society regards as prizes.

She had been tired for a long time. Now the tiredness had reached a climax. If the quiet haven might not bless her life, it was, on the whole, better that she should die.

This quiet fatalism only increased her longing to see Alymer once more.

It was the one thing in all existence left to long for. It merged every remaining faculty into one desire. And Hal would bring him. Hal never failed any one.

Then came the night, and instead of a quiet sleep, restlessness seized her. The recollection of the lawsuit which was to make Alymer's name once for all, came back again and again with merciless insistence, fighting like some desperate thing that last, one, great desire. Try as she would to smother it, after a little period of rest it came back stronger than ever.

In vain she told herself that when he knew she was dying he would have no wish but to hasten to her. In vain, she said also, that success would no longer mean all it had done; that with love crying to him from a death-bed, he would understand its emptiness and scorn it.

Another voice, the voice of her truest self, answered: "Ah! but he is young. Remember he is young - young - young - and you, when you were his age, cared terribly to succeed. You say now that success is empty, but at least you had the satisfaction of learning the fact for yourself. You did not have to take another's word for it, and let your chance pa.s.s you by, just at the moment of grasping it. If he is to be left without you, what will he have then to make up for the great moment lost?

"Nay, worse - what will he have left to spur him to try and regain his proud position, and go on up the heights of fame? And for you, of all people, to deal this blow to his future - the ambitious future which you yourself have fostered and nourished with such care."

The hours wore on, and still, in spite of the awful physical exhaustion, the mental battle raged, draining away strength that should have been carefully nursed for each bad hour of many days ahead. The nurse watched beside her with growing alarm, seeing the feverishness and restlessness, where absolute quiet was imperative.

At last she went to her softly, and said, in a sweet, low voice:

"Madame is in trouble. Madame is fretting. It is not good. Madame must try to rest."

Lorraine turned her feverish, pain-driven eyes to the kindly face, with a lookf of beseeching, but she made no reply.

The nurse laid her cool hand on the burning forehead.

"Madame is not a Catholic, but the priest brings healing to all. Shall I ask him to come and pray, that peace may be given to the sick mind?"

"I cannot confess," Lorraine breathed a little gaspingly. "I could not bring myself to it."

"It is not necessary. The priest will come to pray if madame wishes."