"The hardest thing--the hardest thing!" Again she muttered it, beating at her purpose. And again, that mental, pa.s.sionless query lifted its head. Strike it down as she would, its cool, curious eyes were always on her, not denying, not disputing, only questioning, calmly but implacably, until her soul seemed to writhe in loyalty to her motives, holding them sacred even from questioning.
"The hardest thing"--but her brain rang with the relentless question--"are you doing it because it is the hardest thing or because you want to do it?"
"I am doing it because I want to do the hardest thing."
"A quibble!"
She set her lips, shut her eyes, even to the darkness, and tried to deafen her ears to the sounding thing. A long time she rode so. And then she wept because she was alone and cold and dying and unsuccored by the only one who could have comforted her.
"I would never, never have left _you_!" she called back toward Ewing, with the first reproach she had ever given him. Her voice had a broken sweetness like that of a child speaking through tears. "I"d never have let you be so cold! I"d have stayed--stayed by you--warmed you--comforted you!"
But after a little her tears ceased, as an unpitied child wears out its crying, and her eyes closed again as she laughed at her own sad lack of reason.
When she opened her eyes again she gave a little gasping cry of relief.
The black of the night had faded to gray. A dull, dark, opaque gray it was, but ghosts of the land already bulked ma.s.sively through it; shrouded, vague shapes without line. And the spirit of her purpose quickened as she looked.
Slowly the mist lightened, still opaque but silver now, and presently she saw the murky face of a nearby rock and could trace the cedar that twisted outward from its summit. They were amazing shapes to her, so long had she seemed to live in the dark, and she named them over, wonderingly--"A tree, a rock--a rock, a tree!"
Again the question struck at her: "You want to do the hardest thing?"
"I _must_ do the hardest thing--it only happens that I also wish to."
"Is there nothing harder than what you are doing?"
Again she shut her eyes and set her lips, but the voice came with merciless insistence.
"_What_ would be harder than dying?"
Then she threw back her head and challenged the voice.
"_Living!_ To live would be harder." She made the confession without flinching, even with a laugh, and a weight dropped from her.
"Then you are not doing the hardest thing--not doing it--not doing the hardest thing!"
She coolly scanned the descending bed of a creek that the trail now crossed. The ravine widened below, and she saw that an ascent would be practicable farther down. It was time, then, to leave the trail. If the impossible should happen, if by some chance or trick of woodcraft they tracked her all the miles of her night-long ride, they must lose her here.
She turned c.o.o.ney down the shallow stream with a furtive smile of pride in her own craft. He splashed through the water, stumbling over the submerged bowlders, but always recovering himself, and picking a sure way over the creek bed.
The cool gray of the mist-steaming water reminded her that she was thirsty, but she would stop for nothing now. She knew herself for a coward at last, guilty of a cowardice hideously selfish. She had planned her act to be remote, secret, undiscoverable. But now she faced squarely the grief her loss would be to others.
But the sting would pa.s.s. And she had her own right--her own obligation to meet. She had killed--she had killed her love--and she could not live. There was service she might have performed through the years, but others would perform it now, quite as acceptably. A gnat dropping from the ephemeral human swarm could be nothing but a gnat the less. She no longer pretended to call it the hardest thing. "But it"s the next hardest," she pleaded to herself. Her lips quivered, but she stilled the spasm with a gust of fierce resolving to be done with the thing quickly.
The shelving bank along which the stream had wound now fell away, and she could dimly make out a draw between two hills where she might ascend. She chose a place of broken stone and loose gravel for c.o.o.ney to clamber out, so that he might leave no sign even to a searcher who had come this far. Then, ascending the draw a little distance, she turned and sent him up the side of the lesser hill. The mist still shut her in, but she could make out that the woods were denser on this hill.
c.o.o.ney made his way through a growth of the thick, wet buck brush, then between white files of the quaking aspen, and at last into the heavier wooded forest where his feet slipped and slid on the yielding pine needles as he climbed. The hill lengthened before her in gradual ascents, broken by terraces, and the way was rough with bowlders and fallen trees and the clutching tangle of undergrowth. But the mist, receding before her, revealed aisles of the wood farther on that allured her. She would be thorough. Ahead of her were ruddy, yellow hints of the sun, striking down through the green arches of the forest.
At last she saw that she had reached the summit of the hill. "It is the place," she said, then reined in and dismounted by a clump of bushes.
She found herself stiffened by the cold, and a sudden fear of failing force seized her. She stamped on the ground until she felt warmth in her feet again, and the stirred blood mounting through her. She drew a great breath and straightened her body with a consciousness of its strength and wealth of life. "It is the place," she repeated.
CHAPTER x.x.xI
THE MISSION OF EWING
In a dingy little bedroom of a dingy little hotel in one of the lesser avenues of New York Ewing sat waiting for his hour. He had sealed his letter to Mrs. Laithe with the feeling that this was the last intelligible word he could say to anyone. Henceforth he must be silent; refuse reasons. He must let them devise reasons for him. Any but the true reason would suffice.
When darkness came on he went out into the noisy street, mailing the letter as he pa.s.sed through the hotel office. Then, by unfamiliar thoroughfares he made his way to Ninth Street and resumed his old vigil in front of Teevan"s house.
There were lights in the house, both above and below. The thing was not, then, to be attempted at the moment. He walked for an hour through squalid streets to the west and came back to his post. The house was still alight. Teevan, apparently, was entertaining. He watched but a moment, then returned to his hotel and went to bed. He could be patient, and he must be thorough. Before extinguishing his light he made sure that he had not lost what was now his most important possession: a key to Teevan"s door. Teevan had bestowed it on him the year before, in order that he might obtain books during the little man"s absence from town. Ewing had forgotten the key until he set on his present mission; then he had perceived a use for it.
He fell asleep, despite the recurrent tumult of elevated trains outside his window; fell asleep thinking of Teevan. There was no bitterness in his heart toward the little man. It was only necessary that he die.
He kept closely to his room the next day, wishing not to be recognized by any of his acquaintances, and he was at his post early in the evening. This time the house was dark. Teevan was out, but he would return. So he paced back and forth through Ninth Street, going only so far as would let him keep the house in view. He felt no impatience. It was his last work, and he could bide the time when it might be well done. A little after midnight two men entered the street from Fifth Avenue, strolling leisurely in the warm June night, and ascended the steps of the Teevan house. Ewing felt a slight tingling of relief when he recognized Teevan, but then he saw the other take a key from his pocket, and he knew that this would be Teevan"s son. They went in together, and the watcher left his post. He must have Teevan alone in the house.
He walked on with strange echoes from another time--from another world, it seemed, sounding in his ears. The sight of Teevan, the tones of his voice, faintly heard, seemed to awaken him from some dream in which he walked, awaken him to a time when the little man was his good friend. He felt a sudden nausea, but then he raised his eyes to the Bartell house opposite and was himself again. He crossed the street and stood a moment before the door, seeing his lady there, seeing her again as he had seen her that night in Teevan"s grasp, striving with Teevan, weakly, but with the killing light in her eyes. The vision convinced him. The other time had been the time of dream. He had not been awake until now.
Again he slept and again he pa.s.sed a day of waiting. That night there were no lights in the house, but also no returning master, though he waited until the night was far on. Yet he went to sleep in all patience, knowing he had only to wait.
On the fourth night there were lights again, but about ten o"clock he saw Teevan"s two servants leave. He walked on, to avoid recognition by them. When he returned a man was leaving the house. He thought this might be Teevan, but when the figure had descended the steps and pa.s.sed under the street lamp he saw it to be Teevan"s son. Still he waited. He must be sure.
After half an hour the lights in the lower part of the house went out, save one that shone dimly through the fanlight over the door. A moment later two windows on the floor above leaped ruddily into view and he saw a shadow pa.s.s across them. This was Teevan"s room, and Teevan was doubtless there, alone at last.
He did not cross the street directly, but walked east to the end of the block and came back on the other side. As he pa.s.sed the Bartell house he opened and closed his hands tensely, recalling Ben"s suggestion about a weapon. His bare hands were sufficing weapons.
He went up the steps and softly turned his key in the lock. The door yielded noiselessly to his push and he was in the hall. Unconsciously he took off his hat and was about to leave it, but then he smiled and replaced it firmly on his head. He stood listening a moment. There was no sound. Then, very slowly, taking each step with caution, he mounted the thickly carpeted stairs.
So intent was he on his purpose that he felt no anxiety, no excitement.
As he halted at the head of the stairs to listen again, he thrilled only with the need for perfect silence, a thing he would have felt in the same degree if his quarry had been a deer in some green cover of the hills. Still without a sound he felt his way to the door of Teevan"s room. The door was open and light from it glowed dimly into the hall. He paused within the shadow and peered into the room. He could see the desk but not the man who sat before it. Of him he could see only an arm and hand--writing at the moment. Presently the hand dropped its pen and took up a tall gla.s.s that stood near. The gla.s.s ascended and pa.s.sed beyond the watcher"s range of vision. The hand brought it back, empty, a moment later, and resumed the pen once more.
He took a step forward and brought the room into view. Teevan sat at the desk, his head bent and half turned away. Ewing coolly noted his position. He seemed smaller than ever, smaller and older. But now no time must be wasted.
Ewing stepped through the doorway with noiseless tread and took one long step toward the desk. Teevan turned his head and looked up. His eyes rested on Ewing, at first vacantly, his mind still busied with the matter of his writing. Ewing thrilled with a sudden alertness, his purpose growing in his eyes, his hands tensely closing and unclosing.
Teevan started back from the desk, conscious now of the intruder"s menace. Yet such was the cool fixedness of Ewing"s gaze, the hypnotic tenseness of his crouch, that the little man made no sound; only stared as one under a spell, the pen still held in his poised hand.
Only when the crouching figure leaped toward him did his lips open. But then, what would have been a cry of terror became a mere gurgling snarl, for Ewing"s hands had met about his throat with unerring deftness. Teevan was half-raised from the chair, his head was forced back, and for an instant his eyes met Ewing"s in full consciousness.
Then his mouth opened wide, but not for speech, and his eyes rolled in the agony of that choking grip. Ewing felt the thing writhe in his clutch, then felt a sudden terrible relaxation, and his pressure ceased in unthinking response to this. He stood a moment, holding the limp form, then dropped it in the chair, feeling himself sicken at the sheer physical horror of what he was doing. There was no pity for Teevan--only for the animal that suffered. He had had to kill a dog once and his loathing of that deed was like this. Teevan"s head lay over on his shoulder, his face distorted and purple, his eyes upturned and fixed in a hideous stare. The fine little hands hung limply down.
At the moment Ewing believed his task was done, but then he was dismayed by a gasping, indrawn breath and the convulsive shuddering of Teevan"s chest. The little man was breathing again, though still unconscious. The dog had shown this same horrible tenacity. He must do the thing all over again. He bent over the figure, again fixing his grip nicely at the throat. He would make sure this time. Then nerving himself to exert the needed pressure, he turned his eyes away--he could not look at the face in its death agony--turned his eyes away and found himself staring stupidly at Alden Teevan, who stood inside the door. They gazed at each other a moment until Ewing had appraised the significance of this interruption. It meant only that he would be swiftly apprehended, for he knew that Alden Teevan could not save his father. He had not changed his position, still bending over the little man, still fingering his throat. He was conscious of an increase in his purpose; this hint of opposition would enable him to kill Teevan with a better spirit. He spoke and his voice was only a little hoa.r.s.e under the strain.
"I"m killing your father. I don"t want to hurt you, but you mustn"t try to stop me. If you do, by G.o.d! I"ll kill both of you. If you keep away I"ll go with you after I"ve done it. I promise that."
He turned again to the livid face beneath him. But the younger Teevan called sharply to him, though with only irritation in his voice:
"Stop! Don"t be an a.s.s! You"re making an a.s.s of yourself!"