Out in the roadway Claude made a last effort to react against his humiliation, doing it almost tearfully. "But, look here, Jim, I"ve got to marry Rosie--I"ve _got_ to."
The Irishman in the young man was still in the ascendant as he wagged his head sympathetically. "Sure you"ve got to--if she wants it."
"Well, she does want it, doesn"t she? She must have told you so, or you wouldn"t know so much about it."
"She"s told me all about it from seeding to sale, and it"s G.o.d"s truth I"m handing out to you--no bluff at all. This Rosie"s another proposition."
"I"ll marry her, whatever she is," Claude declared, bravely; "and I"ve got to see her, too."
Jim looked thoughtful. "It isn"t so easy to see her because--Well, now, I"ll tell you straight, Claude--because it makes her kind o" sick to think of you. Oh, that"s nothing!" he hastened to add, on seeing a second convulsion pa.s.s across Claude"s face. "Sure she"d feel the same about any one who"d done the like o" that to her, now wouldn"t she? It isn"t you at all--not any more than it "d be me or anybody else."
"If I could see her," Claude said, weakly, "I"d--I"d explain."
"Ah, but you couldn"t explain quick enough. That"s where the trouble about that"d be. She"d be down on the floor in a faint before you"d be able to say knife. You couldn"t get near her at all at all--not this Rosie--not if it was to explain away the ground beneath her feet."
"She"d get over that--" Claude began to plead.
"She"d get over it if it didn"t kill her first; but it"s my belief it would. If you could have seen her the night she told me about you! It was like cutting out her own heart and picking it to pieces. She"s never mentioned you before nor since--and I don"t think ever will again. No, Claude," he continued, in a reasoning tone, "there"s no two ways about it, but you"ve got to get out--for a spell, at any rate. If you don"t, old man Fay"ll be after you with a gun, and what Matt Fay"ll do may be worse. I can handle them if you"ll keep from hanging yourself out like a red rag to a bull, like; but if you don"t--then the Lord only knows what"ll happen."
"What"ll happen," Claude cried, with a final up-leaping of resistance, "is that you"ll marry Rosie."
"I"ll marry her if she"ll have me. Don"t you fret about that. But I won"t _try_ to marry her--not if I see that she"s got the least little bit of a wish to marry you, Claude. I"ll play fair. If she changes her mind from the way she is now, and gets so as to be able to think of you again, and wants you--wants you of her own free will--then I"ll put up the banns for you myself--and that"s honest to G.o.d."
He offered his hand on the compact, but Claude didn"t take it. He didn"t take it because he didn"t see it, and he didn"t see it because he looked over it and beyond it, as over and beyond the young Irishman himself. It was not that he had any doubt as to Jim"s word being honest to G.o.d, or that he questioned Rosie"s state of mind as Jim had sketched it. It was rather that he was seeing the Claude who was a gentleman and a hero and a devil-of-a-fellow recede into the ether, while he was left eternally with the Claude who remained behind.
Jim felt no resentment for the neglect of his proffered hand, but the long stare of those sick, unseeing eyes made him uneasy. "Well, I guess I must beat it back to my job," he said, beginning to move away. "So long, Claude, and good luck to you!" He added, in order to return to a colloquial tone, "If you ever want a fern-tree, don"t forget that we"ve got some daisies."
But Claude was still staring at the great blue blank which the fading of his ideal had left behind it.
CHAPTER x.x.xII
Twenty-four hours after Claude turned to take the way of humiliation down the hill, undeceived by Jim Breen"s friendly tone and the hope of future possibilities held out to him, Thor Masterman found himself almost within sight of home. On arriving in the city late in the afternoon he went to a hotel, where he took a room and dined. When he had devised the means of letting Lois know that he was camping outside her gates she might be sufficiently touched to throw them open. She might never love him again; she might never have really loved him at all; but he would content himself with a benevolent toleration. Like her, he was afraid of love. The word meant too much or too little, he was not sure which. It was too explosive. Its dynamic force was at too high a pressure for the calm routine of married life. If Lois could find a subst.i.tute for love, he was willing to accept it, giving her his own subst.i.tute in return. All he asked was the privilege of seeing her, of being with her, of proving his devotion, of having her once more to share his life.
It was not to force this issue, but to play lovingly with the hope in it, that when dusk had deepened into evening he took the open electric car that would carry him to the village. He had no intention beyond that of enjoying the cool night air and loitering for a few minutes in sight of the house that sheltered her. She might be on the balcony outside her room, or beneath the portico of the garden door, so that he should catch the flutter of her dress. That would be enough for him--to-night. He might make it enough for the next night and the next. After absence and distance, it seemed much.
County Street was as he had known it on every warm summer night since he was a boy, and yet conveyed that impression which every summer night conveys, of being the first and only one of its kind. The sky was majestically high and clear and spangled, with the Scorpion and the red light of Antares well above the city"s amber glow. Along the streets and lanes dim trees rustled faintly, casting gigantic trembling shadows in the circles of the electric lights. The breeze being from the east and south, the tang of sea-salt mingled with the strong, dry scent of new-mown hay and the blended perfumes of a countryside of gardens. All doors were open as he pa.s.sed along, and so were all windows. On all verandas and porches and steps faint figures could be discerned, low-voiced for the most part, but sending out an occasional laugh or s.n.a.t.c.h of song. Thor knew who the people were; many of them were friends; to some of them he was related; there were few with whom he hadn"t ties antedating birth. It was soothing to him, as he slipped along in the heavy shadow of the elms, to know that they were near.
On approaching his father"s house, which he expected to find dark, he was astonished to see a light. It was a light like a blurred star, on one of the upper floors. From what window it shone he found it difficult to say, the ma.s.s of the house being lost in the general obscurity. The strange thing was that it should be there.
He pa.s.sed slowly within the gate and along the few yards of the driveway, pausing from time to time in order to place the quiet beacon in this room or in that, according to the angle from which it seemed to burn. He was not alarmed; he was only curious. It was no furtive light.
Though the curtains were closed, it displayed itself boldly in the eyes of the neighbors and of the two or three ornamental constables who made their infrequent rounds in County Street. He could only attribute it to old Maggs, who lived in the coachman"s cottage at the far end of the property, though as to what old Maggs could be doing in the house at this hour in the evening, at a time when the parents were abroad and Claude away on a holiday, he was obliged to be frankly inquisitive. An investigating spirit was further aroused by the fact that in one of his pauses, as he alternately advanced and halted, he was sure he heard a footstep. If it was not a footstep, it was a stirring in the shrubbery, as if something had either moved away or settled into hiding.
He was still unalarmed. Night-crimes were rare in the village, and relatively harmless even when they were committed. The sound he had heard might have been made by some roving dog, or by a cat or a startled bird. Had it not been for the light he would scarcely have noticed it.
Taken in conjunction with the light, it suggested some one who had been watching and had slunk away; but even that thought was slightly melodramatic in so well-ordered a community. He went on till he was at the foot of the steps, at a point where he could no longer descry the glow in the upper window, but could perceive through the fanlight over the inner door that, though the lower hall was dark, the electrics were burning somewhere in the interior of the house.
He verified this on mounting the steps and peering into the vestibule through the strip of window at the sides of the outer door. Turning the k.n.o.b tentatively, he was surprised to find it yield. On entering, he stood in the porch and listened, but no sound reached him from within.
Taking his bunch of keys from his pocket, he detached his latch-key softly, and as softly inserted it in the lock. The door opened noiselessly, showing a light down the stairway from the hall above. He could now hear some one moving, probably on the topmost floor, with an opening and shutting of doors that might have been those of closets, followed by a swishing sound like that of the folding or packing of clothes. He entered and closed the door with a distinctly audible bang.
Listening again, he found that the sounds ceased suspiciously. Whoever was there was listening, too. It was easy, by the light streaming from above, to find the b.u.t.ton and turn on the electricity in the lower hall, whereupon the movement up-stairs began again. Some one came out of a room and peered downward. He himself went to the foot of the stairs, looking up. When the watcher on the third floor spoke at last it was in a voice he didn"t instantly recognize. He would have taken it for Claude"s, only that it was so frightened and shrill.
"Who"s there?"
"Who are you?" Thor demanded, in tones that rolled and echoed through the house.
There was a long, hesitating silence. Straining his eyes upward, Thor could dimly make out a white face leaning over the highest banister.
When the question came at last it was as if reluctantly and shrinkingly.
"Is that you, Thor?"
Thor retreated from the stairs, backing away to the library, of which the door was the nearest open one. He distinctly recorded the words that pa.s.sed through his mind. He might have uttered them audibly, so indelible was the impression with which they cut themselves in.
"By G.o.d! I"ve got him."
Out of the confused suffering of two months earlier he heard himself saying: "I swear to G.o.d that if I ever see Claude again I"ll kill him."
He hadn"t meant on that occasion deliberately to register a great oath; the oath had registered itself. It was there in the archives of his mind, signed and sealed and waiting for the moment of putting it into execution. He had hardly thought of it since then; and now it urged itself for fulfilment like a vow. It was a vow to cover not merely one offense, but many--all the long years of nameless, unrecorded irritations, ignored but never allayed, culminating in the act by which this man had robbed him; robbed him uselessly, robbed him not to enjoy the spoil, but to fling it away.
It was a moment of seeing red similar to many others in his life. For the instant he could more easily have killed Claude than refrained from doing it. That he should so refrain was a matter of course. Naturally!
He still kept a hold on common sense. He would not only refrain, but be civil. If Claude were in need of anything or were short of cash he would probably write him a check. It was the irony of this kind of rage that it was so impotent. It was impotent and absurd. It might shake him to the foundations of his being, but it would come to nothing in the end.
It both relieved and embittered him to foresee this result.
From the threshold of the library he called up to Claude, "Come down!"
The tone was imperious; it was even threatening. That degree of menace at least he was unable to suppress.
Claude"s steps could be heard on the stairs. They were slow and clanking because the carpets were up and the house full of echoes. To Thor"s fevered imagination it seemed as if Claude dragged his feet like a man wearing chains, going haltingly and clumsily before some ominous tribunal. The sensation--it was more that than anything else--caused the elder brother to withdraw into the depths of the library, where he turned on a light.
The room, with its bare floors, its shrouded furniture, its screened book cases, its blank pictures swaddled in linen bags, its long, gaunt shadows, and its deadened air, suggested itself horribly and ridiculously as a fitting scene for a crime. He might kill Claude with a blow, and if he turned out the lights and shut the door and stole back to his hotel no one would ever suspect him as the murderer. The idea would have been no more than grotesque had it not acquired a certain terror from the mingling of affection and anger and pity in his heart at the sound of Claude"s shrinking, clanking advance. In proportion as Claude seemed to be afraid of him, he was the more aware that he was a man to be afraid of. The consciousness caused him to get deeper into the dimly lighted room, taking his stand at the remotest possible spot, with his back to the empty fireplace.
But when Claude appeared coatless in the doorway, his head was thrown up defiantly in apparent effort to treat Thor"s entrance as unwarranted.
"What the devil are you doing here?"
Because of the semi-obscurity his face was white with a whiteness that quickened Thor"s sympathy into self-reproach.
"What are _you_ doing here?"
"That"s my business." In making this reply Claude seemed to take it for granted that they met on terms of hostility, though he added, less aggressively: "If you want to know, I"m packing up. Taking the train for New York at one o"clock to-night."
Thor endeavored to speak with casual fraternal interest. "What brought you back?"
Claude took time to light a cigarette, saying, as he blew out the match, "You."
"Me? I thought it might be--might be some one else."