Donaldson turned upon him and the nurse.
"Go down-stairs," he commanded.
His voice made them both shudder back.
"Go down-stairs," he repeated. "Do you hear! Leave her to me!"
Arsdale started a protest, but the nurse, in fright, took his arm and half dragged him towards the stairs. Donaldson followed threateningly.
His face was terrible. He stood at the head of the stairs until they reached the hall below. Then he returned to the door.
"Elaine," he said, "I have come back. Do you hear me, Elaine? I have come back."
He heard within the sound as of m.u.f.fled sobbing. He himself was breathing as though a great weight were on his chest.
"Elaine," he cried, "won"t you open the door to me?"
The sobbing was broken by a tremulous voice.
"Is that you, Peter Donaldson?"
"Yes, yes!"
"Then go away and leave me, Peter Donaldson."
"Elaine, can you hear me clearly?"
There was the pause of a moment, and than the broken voice.
"Go away."
"No," he answered steadily, "I can"t. I can"t go away again until I see you. You must tell me face to face to go. I "ve come back to you."
She did not answer.
"Elaine," he cried, "open the door to me. Let me see you."
"I don"t want to see you."
He waited a moment. Then he said more soberly,
"Elaine, I can"t go away. I must stay right here until I see you. I sha"n"t move from here until my soul goes. Whether you hear me or not, you will know that I am right here by the door. At the end of one hour, at the end of two hours, at the end of a day, I shall still be here. If they try to drag me away, they "ll have to fight--they "ll have to fight hard."
There was no answer. He leaned back against the wall. Below, he heard a whispered conversation between Arsdale and the nurse; within, he heard nothing. So five minutes pa.s.sed, and to Donaldson the world was chaos. He felt as though he were locked up in a tomb. There was the same feeling of dead weight upon the shoulders; the same sensation of stifling. Then he heard her voice,
"Are you still there, Peter Donaldson?"
"Yes," he answered.
"Won"t you please go away?"
"I shall not go away until I have seen you."
Then another long suspense began, but it was shorter than the first.
"If I let you come in for a minute, will you go then?"
"Yes," he answered, "I will go then."
It seemed an eternity before he heard the key turn in the lock and saw the door swing open a little. He stepped in. She had taken a position in a far corner. She had drawn the j.a.panese shawl tightly about her, and was standing very erect, her white face like chiseled marble. He started towards her, but she checked him.
"Do not come any nearer," she commanded.
He steadied himself.
"I told you," he began abruptly, "that I was going because I must.
That was true; I went thinking I was to meet Death."
She took a step towards him.
"You were ill? You are ill now?"
"No."
He paused. Now that the time had come when he could tell her all, it was a harder thing to do than he had thought. If she withdrew from him now--what would she do after she had learned? Yet he must do this to be a free man, to be even a free spirit. There must be no more shadows between them, not even shadows of the past.
"I told you," he said, "of my life up to the time I came to New York, of the daily grind it was to get that far. That was only the beginning--after that came the real struggle. It was easy to fight with the enemy in front--with something for your fists to strike against. But then came the waiting years. I was too blind to see all the work that lay around me. I was too selfish to see what I might have fought for. I saw nothing except the wasting months. I lost my grip. I played the coward."
He took a quick, sharp breath at the word. It was like plunging a knife into his own heart to stand before her and say that.
"One day in the laboratory," he struggled on, "Barstow told me of a poison which would not kill until the end of seven days. Because I was not--the best kind of fighter--I--stole it and swallowed it. That was a week ago. I am here now only because the poison did n"t work."
"You--you tried to kill yourself?" she cried in amazement.
"Yes," he answered unflinchingly, "I tried to quit. There were many things I wanted--cheap, trivial things, and at the time I did n"t see my course clear to getting them in any other way. The other things--the things worth while were around me all the time, but I could n"t see them."
He paused. She drew away from him.
"So you see I did not do bravely. I wanted you to know this from the first, but there didn"t seem to be any way. I did n"t want to stand before you as a liar--as a hypocrite, and yet I did n"t want to balk myself in the little good I found myself able to do. That silence was part of the penalty. I left you yesterday without telling, for the same reason. That and one other: because I did n"t want you to think me a coward when death might cut off all opportunity for ever proving otherwise."
Again he paused, hoping against a dead hope. But she stood there, cringing away from him, her frightened lips dumb.
"That is all," he concluded. "Now I will go. But don"t you see that I had to intrude long enough to tell you this? I stand absolutely honest before you. There isn"t a lie in me. Now I am going to work."
He made an odd looking picture as he stood there. Haggard, hot-eyed, with a touch of color above his unshaven cheeks, he was like a victorious general at the end of a hard week"s campaign.
He turned away from her and went out of the room. At the foot of the stairs he pa.s.sed in silence Arsdale and the nurse. He turned back.
"Sandy! Sandy! Where are you?"