Her father came in presently, grumbling about the lack of light as he stumbled against a chair. He let it be known that he had returned to the city in some alarm about her, inspired by a letter from her aunt. She hastily a.s.sured him that she was well--never better. But he demurred at her remaining longer in town.
"You"ll have to get out, daughter. It"s beastly unpleasant doing those slum things in summer. You need life and gayety. You come with me and dance, play bridge, swim, sail--enjoy yourself with your own kind for a while. You"re going on Tom Neville"s yacht to-morrow. He"s to pick us up about noon with Randy Teevan."
"Will he be there?" she asked.
"He will, and he"ll be one of a jolly crowd that will "liven you up.
Here"s Clarence--he must come, too."
Her brother had felt his way through the darkness, and before she guessed his intention he had found one of the electric lights and turned it on. She shrank back with a strange, smothered cry, under the sudden light, her hand before her face as if to ward off invisible horrors, her eyes staring at them under it, wild with appeal. They were speechless for the moment, alarmed by her manifest illness, her frightened, haggard face, in which the fever raged. Her brother was the first to speak, going to her and taking the blind, defending hand she had put out. She clung to him when she felt his touch, but turned her face away.
"See here, Nell," he began, in tones of savage decision, "no yachting trip for you, my girl. "Twon"t do, governor, you can see that for yourself. But I"ll tell you what she"s going to do--she"s going to pack up and go back to the mountains with me and stay there till she"s well."
She still clung to him, drawing his arms around her with an effect of hiding.
"Yes, yes, that"s it--let"s go there--out where there"s room. It"s stifling here. Have you noticed how curiously stifling it is? Too many people, dead people and live people, and all hobn.o.bbing. We must get away, brother."
"You hear that, dad? She"ll go back with me. How soon, Nell?--I say, how soon?" he repeated, for she had not seemed to hear him.
"How soon?" She raised her eyes to them with sudden intelligence, then sprang wildly to her feet.
"Oh, soon, at once!--Well, not to-night, perhaps,"--she sank back again--"but to-morrow, next day. We"ll all go. Mr. Ewing is going." Her eyes rested on Ewing a moment, then, with a difficult smile, she turned to her brother. "And Virgie must go, too. Telegraph her to-night. She"ll make us gay, she"ll make us--as we used to be. We couldn"t go without Virgie. She will--comfort us."
"She"ll go, too, Sis. It"s all right. I"ll telegraph. But what are you afraid of? You"ll be a well woman there in a month."
"Afraid--I afraid?" She looked up at him in wonder. "I don"t know. Oh, yes I do. Why, I just tried to kill--I"ve just killed--killed a hundred people--killed----"
"Good Lord--there--she"s fainted! Get some water and a drop of brandy, dad!"
"Poor child--it"s so fearfully unpleasant," murmured Bartell as he came back with a gla.s.s and decanter. "It"s that tenement house thing that"s got on her nerves."
"An unpleasant business," returned his father, "all that rot--mighty unpleasant!"
Ewing waited in the outer room until he heard the broken murmur of her voice and knew that she had recovered. Then he went quickly out, the portrait under his arm. He had the feeling that it had been contaminated by Teevan"s touch.
He began dismantling his studio that night. He stopped in the work once to look out over the roofs, glowing luridly under a half moon. This was because the pleading of the woman still rang in his ears--"Don"t let him tell you anything"--and the whole entreating look of her flashed back to him. Then the big, slow tears of pity gathered in his eyes to set the chimney pots dancing before him.
"If only I hadn"t owed him money!" he muttered, beside himself with pity and hatred.
It was not until the day before they started West that Mrs. Laithe learned the secret of this pity of Ewing"s that had so puzzled her.
Alden Teevan begged a moment with her in the afternoon of that day, and she, sunk in the languor of her sickness, received him where she lay, in her own sitting-room.
He swept her with a long, knowing look as he entered, reading, she saw, the truth about her condition.
"I"d gladly go with you, Nell," he began--"let my own walls close at the same time." But she would have no bald admissions.
"I"m not going, Alden--I"m only a bit run down. I shall pick up in a month out there." He detected her insincerity but only smiled in a hurt way.
"That"s one of your rules of the game, isn"t it, to keep up the pretense? Of course I can"t expect you to break rules for me." She faced him stanchly, looking denial.
"But I must tell you something," he went on quickly, "something horrible and absurd and unbelievable." She listened, and grew faint in an agony of unbelief, while he told her what had inspired Ewing"s behavior the night before. She made him repeat it, testing each detail, weighing its credibility against Ewing"s inexperience; dazedly trying to see herself as he must see her now. Alden Teevan regarded her with quickening sympathy.
"It wasn"t a pretty thing to do, Nell, but I saw he had some deviltry afoot, and I got it from him--I half choked and half wheedled it from him. Fortunately he was drunk or I couldn"t have got it either way. But now you know. It began, as nearly as I could gather, one night last spring when Ewing saw you leaving the house. The vain little fool guessed he"d seen you, and told him the tale about a woman who"d been hara.s.sing him because he was trying to break off an affair with her."
"I remember----"
"And then last night----"
"Last night--ah, last night!" She laughed weakly, recalling the scene that had met Ewing"s eyes, perceiving what he must have thought. "I"d have done it for you," she heard him say again, and shuddered. She recalled, too, her own later urging, "Never let him tell you anything."
How pitiful she must have seemed to him, and how monstrous! She laughed again wildly, suddenly struck by the cunning of this satire on truth.
Alden Teevan recalled her from the picture.
"It was like him, wasn"t it, Nell?--like both of them--like him to say it, and like the other to believe. But the harm can be undone. You can explain--a word or two."
She stared at him in sudden consternation. It had flashed upon her that no half truth would satisfy Ewing. She knew she would be unequal to any adequate fiction; she would falter and he would see to the heart of her lie. She must let him think as he did--or blacken his dearest memory.
But to Alden Teevan she only said:
"Ah, yes--a word will explain--and I"m so grateful to you." She was wondering then if she were glad or sorry that he had told her. She might have lived out her time without knowing, she thought.
"Of course, if you"d like me to tell him, Nell----"
"No, no, Alden, thank you; but that"s for me."
They had not spoken Ewing"s name, but his concern in the matter, the meaning of his faith in the woman, was a matter that seemed to lie open to them both. Alden Teevan had a.s.sumed it and she had made no denial.
His recognition of it colored his leave-taking.
"All happiness for you, Nell. The game ought to be worth playing with you--and with him. You both live so hard." He found it difficult to say as little, there was such grat.i.tude and such misery in her eyes as they fell before his, trying to veil at least a part of what she felt. But he left her so.
She lay a long time trying to realize Ewing in this new light. She had never read anything in his eyes but the fullest devotion, and yet for months he had believed this sinister thing. She caught again his young, sorry, protesting look, and the poignancy of it brought her tears.
There came into the tenderness she had felt for him something of awe for his unquestioning allegiance, a thing that had not wavered under the worst he could believe. Then the monstrous absurdity of what he did believe came upon her once more and she laughed; but her tears still fell. And so, with laughter and tears, she set him up anew in her heart, her beloved child and her terrible master. She was glad now that she knew. It made him more to her. And the time would be so short.
CHAPTER XXVI
THE SUNSET TRAIL
Ewing had looked forward pleasantly to meeting Virginia Bartell again, but it was a new Virginia who met him with a nod when he joined the party on the evening of the start. She had eyes only for her sister, the white, weak, phantom thing who smiled terribly as her brother half carried her into the stateroom of their car. Through the days of the journey he sought to cheer her, wistfully making jests about the flat land and its people as they sped through the little wooden towns, promising her a land that would be "busy every minute." But she would only say, "I"ll like your land when it makes sister well."
"It"s bound to," he a.s.sured her. "n.o.body dies there unless he gets careless. Here, this is the way it happens. Here"s Ben Crider"s last letter. You"ll like Ben. Listen to this and see if it doesn"t make you hopeful." He opened the scrawled sheet and read:
""Dear Kid, I thought it about time to write you a few lines. If you seen the lake now you would want to of been here. Life and nature seems very complete here. I heard Chet Lynch shot Elmer Watts. I been building a haystacker for Pierce. Plenty deer sign around the lick. Lee Jennings was killed by a bucker falling back on him. I can sell your saddle for twenty-two dollars to Ben Lefferts. I put a new latigo on it. Let me know. Say, Kid, I sent two dollars to the Mystic Novelty Company. The address is Lock Box 1347. The ad. said they would send you a book how to read past, present and future from the hand and a genuine ten-karat Persian diamond pin set in solid gold, if you sent on one dollar in stamps or P. O. order. Well, the diamond may be all right enough Persian, but the solid gold setting has turned black. You go there and ask for the head man and raise particular--"" He broke off the reading.
"You see, they only die by getting shot, or falling off a horse."
The girl shuddered and turned to him with a sudden helpless yielding.