Padre Nuestra qui estás en los cielos—
Padre Nuestra qui estás en los cielos—
Padre Nuestra qui estás en los cielos—
and presently:
Santa Maria—
Santa Maria—
Santa Maria—
Honor found herself listening a little scornfully. Was there indeed a Father in the heavens or anywhere else who concerned Himself about things like this? Josita seemed to think so. She was in terror,but she was clinging to something ... somewhere.... Honor decided that she did not mind the murmur of her voice; she could go on with her thinking just the same.Jimsy.Jimsy King—Jimsy—"Wild"—King. What was she going to do? What had she promised Stepper that day on the way to the train? It all came back to her like a scene on the screen—the busy streets—the feel of the wheel in her hands again—Stepper's slow voice—"But, if the worst should be true, if the boy really has gone to pieces, you won't marry him?" And her own words—"No; if Jimsy should be—like his father—I wouldn't marry him, Stepper. There shouldn't be anymore'Wild Kings.'"
That was her promise to her stepfather, her best friend. But what had been her promise to Jimsy, that day on the shore below the Malibou Ranch when they sat in the little pocket of rocks and sand and sun, and he had given her the ring with the clasped hands? Hadn't she said—"I do believe you, Jimsy. I'll never stop believing you!" Yes, but how was she to go on believing that he would not do the thing she saw him do? How compass that? Her love and loyalty began to fling themselves against that solid wall of ugly fact and to fall back, bruised, breathless.
Jimsy King of the hard muscles and wingèd heels, the essence of strength and sunny power; Jimsy King, collapsed in the arms of Yaqui Juan, failing her in the hour of her direst need. Jimsy, her lover, who had promised her she should never go alive into those dark and terrible hands ... Jimsy, who could not lift a finger now to defend her, or to put her beyond their grasp. It became intolerable to sit still. She sprang up and began to walk swiftly from wall to wall of the big room, her heels tapping sharply on the smooth red tiles. Josita lifted mournful eyes to stare at her for an instant and then returned to her beads. Honor paused and looked out of the window. She could see nothing through the inky blackness. Perhaps Yaqui Juan was creeping back to them now, the canteens of precious water hung about his neck,—and perhaps he was dead. There had been no shots, but they would not necessarily shoot him. There were other ... awfuller ways. And Jimsy King was asleep. What would he be like when he wakened, when he came to himself again? Could he ever face her? Would helive?... And suppose she cast him off,—then, what? She would go back to Italy, to the mountainousSignorina. She would embrace her warmly and there would emanate from her the faint odor of expensive soap and rare and costlyscents, and she would pat her with a puffy hand and say—"So, my good small one? The sun has set, no? Ah, then, it does not signify whether one feel joy or sorrow, so long as one feels. To feel ... that is to live, and to live is to sing!" And she would go to work again, and sing in concert, and take the place offered to her in the opera. And some day, when she went for a holiday to Switzerland (she supposed she would still go on holidays; people did, no matter what had happened to them) she would meet Ethel Bruce-Drummond, hale and frank as the wind off the snow, and she would say—"But where's your boy? I say, you haven't thrown him over, have you?"
Well, could you throw over what fell away from you? Could you? She realized that she was gripping the old ring with the thumb and fingers of her right hand, literally "holding hard." Was this what James King had meant? Had Jeanie King, Jimsy's firm-chinned Scotch mother who so nearly saved her man, had she held on in times like this? Surely no "Wild King" had ever failed his woman as Jimsy had failed her, in the face of such hideous danger. But did that absolve her? After all (her love and loyalty flung themselves again against the wall and it seemed to give, to sway)wasit Jimsy who hadfailed her? Wasn't it the taint in his blood, the dead hands reaching up out of the grave, the cruel certainty that had hemmed him in all his days,—the bitter man-made law that he must follow in the unsteady footsteps of his forbears?
It wasn't Jimsy! Nothimself; not the real boy, not the real man. It was the pitiful counterpart of him. The real Jimsy was there, underneath, buried for the moment,—buried forever unless she stood by! (The wall was swaying now, giving way, crumbling.) Her pride in him was gone, perhaps, and something of her triumphant faith, but her loyalty was there and her love was there, bruised and battered and breathless; not the rosy, untried, laughing love of that far-away day in the sand and sun; a grave love, scarred, weary, argus-eyed. (The wall was down now, a heap of stones and mortar.) She went upstairs to Jimsy's room and knocked on the door. There was no answer. She knocked again, and after an instant she tried to open it. It was locked, and she could not rouse him, and a sense of bodily sickness overcame her for the moment.
Madeline King came out of her husband's room and hurried to her. "Ah, I wouldn't, my dear," she said. "Wait until he—wait a little while." She put her arm about her and pulled her gently away.
"I'll wait," said Honor in her rasping whisper. "I'll wait for him, no matter how long it is."
The Englishwoman's eyes filled. "My dear!" she said. "Do you mind sitting with Richard a few moments? I find it steadies me to move about a bit."
"Of course I'll sit with him," said Honor, docilely, "but I'll always be waiting for Jimsy." She sat down beside Richard King and took up the fan.
"He's been better ever since that bit of water," said his wife, thankfully. "And Juan will fetch us more! Good soul! If ever we come out of this, Rich' must do something very splendid for him."
Carter went down into thesala. Honor had asked him to leave her, but he found that he could not stay away from her; the remembrance of her eyes when she looked at Jimsy was intolerable in the loneliness of his own room. The big living room was empty but he supposed Honor would be back presently, and he sat down in an easy chair and leaned his head back and stared at the ceiling. He had arrived, very nearly, at the end of his endurance. He knew it himself and he was husbanding his failing strength as best he could. All his life, at times of illness or stress, he had been subject to fainting fits; miraculously, in these dreadful days, he had not fainted once, but now waves were rising about him, almostsubmerging him. If the Indian came soon with the water ... if he could once drink his fill ... if he could drink even a few drops ... he could hold out. But the Indian had been gone for more than an hour, and there was grave doubt of his ever coming back.
His eyes, skimming the ceiling, dropped to the shelves of books which ran about the room and rose almost to meet it. They came to a startled halt on a vase of ferns on a high shelf. A vase of ferns. There must have been water in it.Perhaps there was water in it now!He was so weak that it was a tremendous effort for him to drag himself out of his chair and across the room, to climb up on the book ladder and reach for it. He grew so dizzy that it seemed as if he must drop it. He shook it.Water!He lifted out the ferns and looked. It was almost full. He stood there with it in his hand, his eyes on the doors. He wanted with all his heart to call Honor, to share it. His heart and his mind wanted to call her, but his hands lifted the vase to his dry lips and he drank in great gulps. He stopped himself before he was half satisfied. He was equal to that. Then he put the ferns back in the vase and the vase back on the shelf and went into the hall and called upstairs to her.
Honor came at once. "Oh, Carter, has Juan come?"
"No, not yet! But I think—I hope—I've made a discovery! Look!" He pointed to the vase.
She caught her breath. "There might be water in it?"
"Yes, I'm sure there is." Again, more steadily this time, he mounted the little sliding book ladder and reached for the vase, and Honor stood watching him with wide eyes, her cracked lips parted.
"Water?" she whispered.
He nodded solemnly, shaking the tall vase for her to hear the heartening sound of it. When he stood on the floor he held it toward her. "You first, Honor."
"No." She was trembling. "We'll pour it out into a pitcher. If there's enough to divide, we'll all have some. If there's just a little, we'll give it to Mr. King." She went away, walking a little unsteadily, putting out a hand here and there against the wall or the back of a chair, and in a moment she came back with a tall glass pitcher. "Careful, Cartie ... mustn't spill a drop...."
There was less than a cupful of dark, stale water, with bits of fern fronds floating in it.
"Only enough for him," said Honor, her chinquivering. "Oh, Cartie, I'm so thirsty ... so crazy thirsty...."
"You must take it yourself," said Carter, sternly. "Every drop." He held the pitcher up to her.
Honor hesitated. "Cartie, I couldn't trust myself to drink it out of the pitcher ... I'm afraid ... but I'll pour out about two teaspoonfuls for each of us...." She poured an inch of water into a tiny glass. "You first, Carter."
"No," said Carter, "I'm not going to touch it. It's for you and the Kings."
"Carter! You're wonderful!" She drank her pitiful portion in three sips. "There ... now you, please, Cartie! Just one swallow!"
But Carter shook his head. "No; I don't need it. Shall I take this to Mrs. King?"
"Yes." Her sad eyes knighted him.
Carter took the pitcher of water to Mrs. King without touching a drop of it and helped her to strain the fern bits out of it through a handkerchief before she began to give it to her husband in spoonfuls. With the first sip he ceased his uneasy murmuring and she smiled up at the boy. "Thank you, Carter. It's very splendid of you. Won't you take a sip for yourself?"
Carter said he did not need it.
"You do look fresher, really. You've stood thisthing extraordinarily well. Did you give Honor some?"
"She would take only a taste."
Madeline King's eyes filled. "This is a black night for her, Carter. The thirst—and theinsurrectos—are the least of it for Honor."
Carter's eyes were bleak. "But she had to know it some time. She had to find it out, sooner or later. She couldn't have gone on with it, Mrs. King."
She sighed. "I never was so astounded, so disappointed in all my life. One simply cannot take it in. He has been so absolutely steady ever since he came down,—and so fine all through this trouble! And to fail us now, when we need him so,—with Honor in such danger—" She gave her husband the last of the water and then laid on his forehead the damp handkerchief through which she had strained it. "It will break his uncle's heart. He was no end proud of him."
"She had to know it some time," said Carter, stubbornly. "Is there anything I can do, Mrs. King?"
"Nothing, Carter."
"Then I'll go back to Honor."
Something in his expression, in the way his dry lips said it, made the woman smile pityingly. "Carter, I—I'm frightfully sorry for you, too."
He drew himself up with something of the old concealing pride. "I'm quite all right, thank you."
She was not rebuffed. "You are quite all wretched," she said, "you poor lad, and I'm no end sorry, but—Carter, don't think this ill wind of Jimsy's will blow you any good."
He flushed hotly through his strained pallor.
"Ah," said the Englishwoman, gently, "you were counting on it. It's no good, Carter. It's no good. Not with Honor Carmody."
Carter did not answer her in words but there was angry denial in the tilt of his head as he limped away, and she looked after him sadly.
He found Honor limply relaxed in a long wicker chair. "Carter," she whispered, "I wish I'd asked you to give Jimsy a taste of that water."
"You think he deserves it?" He couldn't keep the sneer out of his voice.
"No," she answered him honestly. "I don't think he deserves it ... but he needs it."
The words repeated themselves over and over in the other's mind. He didn't deserve it, but he needed it. That was the way—the weak, sentimental, womanish way in which she would reason it out about herself, he supposed ... Jimsy King didn't deserve her, but he needed her. He was deep in hisbitter reflections when he realized that she was speaking to him.
"Cartie, I must tell you how fine I think you are! You were splendid ... about the water ... not taking any ... when I know how you're suffering." She had to speak slowly, and if Stephen Lorimer had stood out in the hall he would never have recognized his Top Step's voice. "Of course we believe help is coming ... that we'll be safe in a few hours ... but because we may not be ... this is the time for telling the truth, isn't it, Carter? I want to tell you ... how I respect you.... Once I said you were weak, when I was angry at you.... But now I know you're strong ... stronger than—Jimsy ... with the best kind of strength. I want you to know that I know that, Carty."
"Honor!" The truth and the lie spun round and round in his aching head; hewasstronger than Jimsy King; he hadn't made a drunken beast of himself; suppose he had taken the first sip of the water?—He hadn't taken it all. He was a better man than Jimsy King. He made a swift motion toward her, saying her name brokenly in his choked voice, but he crumpled suddenly and slid from his chair to the floor and was still.
Honor flew to the foot of the stairs and called Mrs.King. "Carter has fainted! Will you help me?"
Mrs. King called the Mexican guard in from the porch to lift him to the couch, and she and the girl fanned him and chafed his thin wrists. When he came to himself he was intensely chagrined. "I'm all right," he said impatiently, sitting up. "I wish you wouldn't bother."
"Lie still for a bit," said Mrs. King. "You've had a nasty faint."
Honor saw his painful flush. "Cartie, it's no wonder you fainted,—I feel as if I might, any minute. And I did nearly faint once, didn't I, Mrs. King? The day I arrived here—remember?" She remembered all too keenly herself ... the instant of relaxed blackness that followed on the sound of Richard King's hearty voice—"Why, the boy's all right! Ab-so-lutely all right! Isn't he, Madeline? Steady as a clock. That college nonsense—" And the contrast between that day of faith triumphant and this dark night was so sharp and cruel that she could not talk any more, even to comfort Carter. They were all silent, so that they clearly heard the unlocking, the opening, the closing of the door of Jimsy's room, and then a step—a swift, sure step upon the stair.
Then Yaqui Juan walked into thesala.
"Juan!" They sprang at him, galvanized into life and vigor at the sight of him. But he stood still, staring at them with a look of scorn and dislike, his arms folded across his chest.
"Juan," Mrs. King faltered,—"no agua?" It was incredible. He was back, safely back, untouched, not even breathing hard. Where was the water he had risked his life to bring them? The Englishwoman began to cry, childishly, whimpering. "I can't bear it ... I can't bear it ... I wanted it for Rich' ... for Rich'!"
The Indian did not speak, but his scornful, accusing eyes, raking them all, came to rest on Honor, fixing her with pitiless intensity.
The girl was shaking so that she could hardly stand; she caught hold of the back of a tall chair to steady herself. "Juan,—you came out of Señor Don Diego's room?" she whispered.
"Si, Señorita." He was watching the dawning light in her face, but the sternness of his own did not soften.
"You didn't go at all," wept Mrs. King, rocking to and fro and wringing her hands. "You didn't go at all!"
"No, Señora."
Honor Carmody screamed, a hoarse, exultant shout.It was as she had screamed in the old good days when Jimsy King, the ball clutched to his side, tore down the field and went over the line for a touchdown. "Jimsy went! Jimsy went!Jimsy went!It was Jimsy!Jimsy!" She flung her arms over her head, swaying unsteadily on her feet. Tears streamed from her eyes and ran down over her white cheeks and into her parched mouth. In that instant there was room for no fear, no terror; they would come later, frantic, unbearable. Now there was only pride, pride and faith and clean joy. "Jimsy!Jimsy!" Her legs gave way beneath her and she slipped to the floor, but she did not cease her hoarse and pitiful shouting.
"How could he?" said Carter Van Meter. "It was impossible—in that condition! Honor, he couldn't——"
But Yaqui Juan strode to the little table where the empty decanter stood, stooped, picked up a rough jug of decorative Mexican pottery from an under shelf. Then, pausing until he saw that all their eyes were upon him, he slowly poured its contents back into the decanter. The liquor rose and rose until it reached the exact spot which Carter had pointed out to Honor—the top of the design engraved on the glass. "Mira!" said the Indian, sternly.
"God," said Carter Van Meter.
"He was acting! He was acting!" wept Mrs. King.
But Jimsy's Skipper sat on the floor, waving her arms, swaying her body like a yell leader, still shouting his name in her cracked voice, and then, crazily, her eyes wide as if she visualized a field, far away, a game, a gallant figure speeding to victory, she sang:
You can't beat L. A. High!You can't beat L. A. High!Use your team to get up steamBut you cant beat L. A. High!
You can't beat L. A. High!You can't beat L. A. High!Use your team to get up steamBut you cant beat L. A. High!
You can't beat L. A. High!
You can't beat L. A. High!
Use your team to get up steam
But you cant beat L. A. High!
The Indian looked at Honor and the bitterness in his eyes melted a little. "Esta una loca," he said.
It was quite true. She was a madwoman for the moment. They tried to control her, to calm her, but she did not see or hear them. "Let her alone," said Mrs. King. "At least she is happy, Carter. She'll realize his danger in a minute, poor thing." She turned to Yaqui Juan at the sound of his voice. He told her that he was going out after his young lord. He was going to find Señor Don Diego, alive or dead. He had promised him not to leave the locked room for two hours; he had kept his word as long as he could endure it. Señor Don Diego had had time to come back unless he had been captured. Now he, Yaqui Juan, whom the young master had once saved, would go to him, to bring him back, or to die with him. The solemn, grandiloquent words had nothing of melodrama in them, falling from his grave lips. He took no pains to conceal his deep scorn for them all.
Madeline King thought of her husband, wounded, helpless. "Oh, Juan—must you leave us? If—if something has happened to him it only means your life, too!"
"Voy!" said the Indian, "I go!" He turned and looked again at Honor, this time with a warming pity in his bronze face. "I will bring back your man, Señorita," he said in Spanish. "And this great strong one"—he pierced Carter through with his black gaze—"shall guard you till I come again." Then he smiled and flung at him that stinging Spanish proverb which runs, "In the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king!" Then he went out of the house, dropping to his hands and knees, hugging the shadows, creeping along the tunnel of tropic green which led to the ancient well.
Honor stopped her wild singing and shouting then, but she still sat on the floor, striking her hands softly together, her dry lips parted in a smile of utter peace.
"Come, Honor, take this chair!" Carter urged her, bending over her.
"I don't want a chair, Cartie," she said, gently. "I'm just waiting for Jimsy." She looked up and caught the expression on Madeline King's face. "Oh, you mustn't worry," she said, contentedly."He'll bring him back. Yaqui Juan will. He'll bring him backsafe. Why, what kind of a God would that be?—To let anything happen to him,now?" Her defense was impregnable.
"Let her alone," said Mrs. King again. "She'll realize, soon enough, poor child. Stay with her, Carter. I must go back to my husband." She went away with a backward, pitying glance which yet held understanding. She knew that danger and death and thirst were smaller things than shame, this wife of a King who had held hard in her day.
Carter sat down and watched her drearily. He wasn't thinking now. He was nothing at all but one burning, choking thirst, one aching resentment ... Jimsy King, who had won, after all ... who had won alive or dead.
Honor was silent for the most part but she was wholly serene. Sometimes she spoke and her speech was harder to hear than her happy stillness. "You know, Cartie, I can be glad it happened." She seemed to speak more easily now, almost as if her thirst had been slaked; her voice was clearer, steadier. "I should never have known how much I cared. It was easy enough, wasn't it, to look at my ring and talk about 'holding hard' when there wasn't really anything to holdfor? I really found out aboutcaring to-night ... what it means. I guess I never really loved him before to-night, Carter." She was not looking at him, hardly talking to him; she seemed rather to be thinking aloud. Even if she had looked him full in the face she would not have realized what she was doing to him; there was only one realization for her now. "I guess I just loved what hewas—his glorious body and his eyes and the way his hairwillwave—and what he coulddo—the winning, the people cheering him. But to-night, when I thought—when I believed the very worst thing in the world of him—when I thought he had failed me—then I found out. Then I knew I loved—him." She leaned her head back against the arm of the chair, and her hands rested, palm upward, in her lap. "It's worth everything that's happened, to know that." She was mercifully still again. Carter thought once that she must be asleep, she was breathing so softly and evenly, but after a long pause she asked, with a shade of difference in her tone, "How long has Juan been gone, Carter?"
He looked at his watch. "Twenty minutes. Perhaps half an hour."
Honor rose to her feet. "Well, then," she said with conviction, "they'll be here soon! Any minute, now."
"They may not come." He could not help saying it.
"Oh, they'll come! They'll come very—" she stopped short at the sound of a shot. "What was that?" she asked, childishly.
"That was a shot," said Carter, watching her face.
"But it wouldn't hurt Jimsy or Juan. They're nearly here! That was far away, wasn't it, Carter?" Still her bright serenity held fear at bay.
"Not very far, Honor." He wanted to see that calm of hers broken up; he wanted cruelly to make her sense the danger.
"But, Cartie," she explained to him, patiently, "you know nothing is going to happen to Jimsy now, when I've just begun really to care for him!" She opened the door and stepped out on the veranda, and he followed her. "See—it's almost morning!" The east was gray and there was a drowsy twittering of birds.
"It's the false dawn," said Carter stubbornly. "Listen—" another shot rang out, then three in quick succession. "I believe they're chasing Juan!"
The Mexican who was on guard held up a hand, commanding them to listen. They held their breath. Through the soft silence they began to get the soundof running feet, stumbling feet, running with difficulty, and in another moment, up the green lane came Yaqui Juan, bent almost double with the weight of Jimsy King across his back.
"Honor!" Carter tried to catch her. "Come back! You mustn't—Are you crazy?"
But Honor and the Mexican who had been on guard at the steps were running, side by side, to meet them. Yaqui Juan flung a word to thepeónand he stood with his gun leveled, covering the path.
"Mira!" said the Indian, proudly. "Señorita, I have brought back your man!"
"Skipper," cried Jimsy King in a strong voice, "get in the house! Getin! I'm all right!"
Then, unaccountably, inconsistently, all the terror she had not suffered before laid hold on her. "Jimsy! You're hurt! You're wounded!"
"Just a cut on the leg, Skipper! That's why I was so slow. It's nothing, I tell you,—get in the house!"
But Honor, running beside them, trying to carry a part of him, kept pace beside them until Yaqui Juan had carried Jimsy into the house and up the stairs and laid him on his own bed.
"There are five canteens," said Jimsy. "Here—one's for you, Skipper. Take the rest to Mrs. King,Juan. Skipper, drink it. Just a little at first, you know—careful! Don't you hear what I'm saying to you? Drink—the water—out of this canteen!"
Mechanically, her eyes always on his face, Honor loosened the cap and opened the canteen and drank.
"There,—that's enough!" said Jimsy, sharply. "Now, wait five minutes before you take any more." He took the canteen away from her. "Sit down!" He was not meeting her eyes.
"Did you have any, Jimsy?"
"Gallons. I didn't have any trouble to speak of, really. Only one fellow actually on guard. We had a little rough-house. He struck me in the leg, and it bled a lot. That's what kept me. And it took—some time—with him."
"Jimsy, is it bad? Is it still bleeding? Let me see!"
He pushed her away, almost roughly. "It's all right. Juan tied it up. It'll do. I guess you can have a little more water, now,—but take it slowly.... There! Now you'd better go and see about the rest. Don't let them take too much at first."
"I'm not going away," said Honor, quietly. "I'm not going to leave you again, ever." She pulled her chair close beside the bed and took his hand in both of hers. "Jimsy, I know. I know everything."
"That darn' Indian," said Jimsy, crossly. "If he'd stayed in here, with the door locked! I'd have been back in half an hour longer."
"And he poured the whisky back into the decanter. Oh, Jimsy——"
"Well, I suppose it was a fool stunt, but I knew I could put it over. I did a booze-fighter in the Junior play,—and I guess it comes pretty easy!" He turned away from her, his face to the wall. "I'd like to be alone, now, Skipper. You'd better look after Cart'. Watch him on the water. He'll kill himself if he takes too much."
"Jimsy, I'm not going to leave you."
He lifted himself on his elbow. "Skipper, dear," he said gently, "what's the use? I suppose I took a crazy kid way to show you I wasn't worth your sticking to, and I guess I'm not, if it comes to that, but the fact remains, and we can't get away from it."
"What fact, Jimsy?"
"That you—care—for Carter."
"Jimsy, have you lost your senses? I—care forCarter?"
"He told me."
"Then," said Honor, her eyes darkening, "he told you a lie."
He dropped back on the pillow. He had lost a lotof blood before Yaqui Juan found him and tied up his cut, and he looked white and spent. "Oh, Skipper, please.... Let's not drag it out. I saw your message to him."
"What message?"
"The one you sent to the steamer, after he'd lost his head and told you he loved you,—and—and asked you if you loved him." Difficult words; grotesque and meaningless, but he must manage with them. "I'm not blaming you, Skipper. I know I'm slow in the head beside Cart' and he can give you a lot that I can't. And nothing—hanging over him. You'd have played the game through to the last gun; I know that. But it wouldn't have been right for any of us. I'm glad Cart' blew up and told me."
Honor laid his hand gently back on the bedspread of exquisite Mexican drawnwork and stood up. "Carter showed you the telegram I sent him from Genoa?"
"Yes. He carries it always in his wallet."
"He told you it meant that I loved him?"
"Skipper, don't feel like that about it. It had to come out, some time." His voice sounded weary and weak.
She bent over him, speaking gently. "Be quiet, Jimsy; lie still. I'm going to bring Carter up here."
"Oh, Skipper, what's the use? You—you makeme wish that greaser had finished me, down at the well. Please——"
"Wait!"
He heard her feet in the hall, flying down the stairs, and he turned his face to the wall again, his young mouth quivering.
She found Carter lying on the wide couch, one arm trailing limply over the side of it, the emptied canteen dangling from his hand, and he was breathing with difficulty. His face was darkly mottled and congested but Honor did not notice it. "Carter," she said, "I want you to come with me and tell Jimsy how you lied to him. I want you to tell him what my message really meant."
"I—can't come—now," he gasped. "I can't—" he tried to raise himself but he fell back on the pillows.
"Then give me your wallet," she said, implacably, bending over him.
"No,no! It isn't there—wait! By and by I'll——" but his eyes betrayed him.
Roughly, with fierce haste, she thrust her hand into his coat pocket and pulled out his wallet of limp leather with the initials in slimly wrought gold letters.
"Please, Honor! Please,—let me—I'll give you—I'll find it—" he clutched at her dress but she stepped back from the couch and he lost his balance and fell heavily to the floor.
When she pulled out the bit of closely folded paper with a sharp sound of triumph there came with it a thick letter which dropped on the red tiles. He snatched at it but Honor's downward swoop was swifter. She stood staring at it, her eyes opening wider and wider, turning the plump letter in her hands.
"Jimsy's letter to me," she said at last in a flat, curious tone. "The one he gave you to mail." She was not exclamatory. She was too utterly stunned for that. She seemed to be considering a course of action, her brows drawn. "I won't tell Jimsy; I'm—afraid of what he'd do. I'll let him go on believing in you, if you go away."
He looked up at her from his horrid huddle on the floor, through his bloodshot eyes, the boy who had taught her so much about books and plays and dinners in restaurants and the right sort of music to admire, and it seemed to him that her long known, long loved face was a wholly strange one, sharply chiseled from cold stone.
"If you'll go away," she went on, "I won't tell him about the letter." She was looking at him curiously,as if she had never seen him before. "All these years I've been sorry for you because you limped. But I haven't been sorry enough. I see now; it's—your soul that limps. Well, you must limp away, out of our lives. I won't have you near us. You've tried and tried to drag him down but something—somewhere—has held him up! As soon as help comes-to-morrow—to-day—I'm going to marry him, here, in Mexico, and I'll never leave him again as long as we live. Do you hear?"
She turned to go, but he made a smothered, inarticulate sound and she looked down at him, and down and down, to the depths where he lay. "You poor—thing," she said, gently. "Oh, you poor thing!"
She ran up to Jimsy and sat down on the edge of his bed and gathered him into her arms, so that his head rested on her breast. "Carter—poor Carter," she said, "is too weak to come upstairs now, but I am going to tell you the whole truth, and you are going to believe me. Listen, dearest——"
They were still like that, still talking, when Madeline King rushed into the room. "Children," she cried, "oh, my dears—haven't you heard them? Don't you know?"
"No," they told her, smiling with courteous young attention.
"They're here—the soldiers! It's all right!" She was crying contentedly. "Rich' is conscious,—he understands. My dears, we're saved! I tell you we're saved!"
"Oh, we knew that," said Honor, gravely.