CHAPTER XXIVTHE LAST FIGHT
Under the concentrated anguish of Conover’s gaze the girl’s long lashes seemed to flicker ever so slightly. Through the Gethsemane of the moment the impossible fancy that she lived pierced Caleb’s numbed brain; tearing away the apathy that was closing over him. All at once he was again the Fighter,—the man who could not know defeat.
“She is alive!” he persisted as the physician turned from the bed. “Look! She—”
Dr. Bond’s bearded lip curled in a sad derision that woke Caleb’s smouldering antagonism into flame. With a sudden insane impulse the Fighter knelt on the edge of the bed and caught up the pitifully still little hands.
“Dey!” he cried, his great rough voice echoing through the dreadful hush of the room.
Bond opened his mouth to protest; then shrank back to the wall, staring in heavy wonder.
“Dey!” called the Fighter again, an agony of command in his tone. “Dey!Come back!”
It was not the wail of a weak nature vainly summoning the Lost to return. Rather it was the sharp, fierce call of the officer who by sheer force of acceptedrulership rallies his stricken men. Sublimely imperious, backed by a will of chilled steel and by a mentality that had never been successfully balked, the Fighter’s voice resounded again and again in that harsh, domineering order:
“Dey! Come back!”
Calling upon his seemingly dead love to re-enter the frail flesh she was even now quitting, Conover threw into his appeal all the vast strength that was his and the immeasurably enforced power of his despair and adoration. He held the white hands gripped tight to his chest; his face close to the silent girl’s; his light eyes blazing into hers; his every faculty bent with superhuman pressure upon drawing an answering sign from the lifeless form.
“It is madness!” muttered the doctor; infected nevertheless by the dominant magnetism that played about the Fighter and that vibrated through every tone of his imperative voice. “It is madness. She is dead, or—”
Conover did not heed nor hear. He had no consciousness for anything save this supreme battle of his whole life. Vaguely he knew that the innate mastership within him which for years had subdued strong men to his will had been as nothing to the nameless power that love was now enabling him to put forth.
From the threshold of death,—yes, from the grave itself,—she should come at his call; this little, silent wisp of humanity that meant life and heaven to him.
The red-haired man was fighting.
He had always been fighting. But the fiercest of his campaigns had hitherto been as child’s play by comparison with this contest with the Unknown. Once again he was “taking the Kingdom of Heaven by violence!” This time literally.
The mad whim had possessed him through no conscious volition of his own; and he had acted upon it without reflection. He was matching his mortal power against the Infinite.
He was doing what Science knew could not be done; what the most hysterical spiritualist had never claimed power to achieve. He was trying, by force of personality and sheer desire, to check the flight of a soul upon the Borderland.
And over and over again his voice swelled, untiring, through the room, in that one all-compelling demand:—a demand that held no note of entreaty, nor of aught else save utter, fierce domination.
“Dey! Come back!”
The doctor, scared, irresolute, slipped from the room. This type of mania was outside his experience. In time it would wear itself out. In the meanwhile, his nerves could not endure the sound of that ceaseless calling; the sight of the tense, furiously masterful face.
It was two hours later that Dr. Colfax, the first of the summoned New York specialists, arrived. Jack Hawarden met him at the entrance of the hotel and briefly explained the case.
“I wish,” the boy added, “you would go in and see what you can do for Mr. Conover. I’m afraid he has lost his mind. I looked into the room several times and—”
He shuddered at the picture conjured up. His nerves had gone to pieces.
“It was terrible,” he went on. “I didn’t dare interrupt him. He was crouching there, holding her close to him and looking at her as if he’d drag her spirit by main force back into her body. And all the time he was saying over and over—”
“I will go up,” said the specialist, cutting in on the narrative. “Even if the local physician did not complete a full examination to make sure she was dead, such insane treatment would destroy any chance of life. Show me the way.”
Together they entered the sick room. Conover had not stirred. Through the closed door they had heard the hoarse rumble of his eternal command:—
“Dey! Come back!”
Dr. Colfax walked briskly across to the bed.
“Here!” he said, addressing Caleb in the sharp tones used for arousing the delirious. “This won’t do! You must—”
He paused; his first idle glance at Desirée’s pale face changing in a flash to one of keen professional interest. He caught one of her wrists, at the point where it was engulfed in Caleb’s great hand; held it for an instant; then, turning, flung open his black medical case.
Jack, who had lingered at the door, hurried forward on tiptoe.
“You don’t mean—?” he whispered quaveringly.
“The local physician was mistaken,” returned Dr. Colfax in the same key. “Or she—” he hesitated.
“I have heard of such cases,” he murmured, in wonder. “But I only know of two that are authentic. It is more probable that she was merely in a collapse. I can inquire later.”
While he talked, he had been selecting and filling a hypodermic needle. Now, stepping past Conover, who had not noted the newcomers’ presence, he pressed the needle-point into Desirée’s forearm.
“You really think then—?” cried Jack.
“I think it is worth a fight!” snapped the doctor. “Go down and see if my nurse has come. I left her at the station. She could not walk as fast as I. Go out quietly. This man doesn’t even know we are here, but I don’t want to take any chance just yet of breaking his ‘influence.’ Time enough for that when the digitalis begins to act.”
Caleb Conover stretched himself and sat up. He felt oddly weak and depressed. For the first time in his life he was tired out.
For twenty hours he had slept. The afternoon sun was pouring in at the windows. Caleb glanced stupidly about him and recognized the anteroom leading off from the sick chamber. Vaguely at first, then more clearly, he recalled that someone—ever and everso long ago—had shaken him by the shoulder and had repeated over and over in his ears “She is alive!”
Then, at last the iterated words of command that had been saying themselves through his own lips for three hours had somehow ceased, and something in his head had given way. He had lurched into the anteroom, tumbled over on a sofa and had fallen asleep at once from sheer exhaustion. And Dey—?
Weakly cursing the gross selfishness that had let him sleep like a log while Desirée’s life had hung in the balance Conover got to his feet and made for the door of the sick room. His step was springless, clumping, noisy. Dr. Colfax, hearing it, came out from the inner room to meet him. Caleb gazed at the man with dull vacancy. He did not remember having seen him before.
“Miss—Miss Shevlin?” asked Conover, thickly; his throat agonizingly raw from the long hours of tireless, unremittent calling.
“She will get well, I think,” answered the specialist. “The crisis is past. The spine was not injured. But convalescence will be slow. Nursing is the only thing left to do now. I am leaving for New York by the six o’clock train.”
Caleb’s apathetic look slowly changed to deep, growing wonder.
“I think,” went on Dr. Colfax, watching Conover, narrowly, “it may be barely possible that you can thank yourself for her recovery. Perhaps I am mistaken. You see we doctors deal withfacts. But,once in a century something happens outside the realm of fact. Mind you, I don’t go on record as saying this is one of those exceptions. But—I should like to ask you some questions when you are rested enough to—”
“By and by,” assented Caleb. “But I’m going in there to see Dey now, if you don’t mind. Can I?”
“Yes. She has been asking for you. Be careful not to excite her, or—”
“I’ll be careful,” promised Caleb.
Then, with a sheepish laugh, he added:
“I’m glad you didn’t make me put up a fight about goin’ in to see her. I—I kind of feel as if there wasn’t any fight left in me.”
THE END