CHAPTER VIII
THE WHITE MESSENGER
In spite of Bivens's protest Stuart returned to New York on the first train the morning after the coaching party reached the house.
"Stay a week longer," the little man urged, "and I'll go with you; we'll go together, all of us, in my car. I'm getting worse here every day. I've got to get back to my doctors in New York."
"I'm sorry, Cal," he answered quickly, "but I must leave at once."
Nan allowed him to go without an effort to change his decision. A strange calm had come over her. She drove to the station with him in silence. He began to wonder what it meant.
As he stepped from the machine she extended her hand, with a tender smile, and said in low tones:
"Until we meet again."
He pressed it gently and was gone.
He reached New York thoroughly exhausted and blue. The struggles through which he had passed had left him bruised. He spent a sleepless night on the train fighting its scenes over and over. He had told her their relations on any terms must cease, and yet he knew instinctively that another struggle was possible on her return. He made up his mind at once to avoid this meeting.
The sight of Harriet seated on the stoop of the old home by the Square watching a crowd of children play brought a smile back to his haggard face.
He waved to her a block away and she sprang to her feet answering with a cry of joy. The startling contrast between the women struck him again. She met him at the corner with outstretched hands.
"What a jolly scene, little pal!" he cried. "What's the kid's convention about?"
"They've come to honour me with their good wishes on my voyage."
"What voyage?" he asked in surprise.
"Oh, you didn't know—I've an engagement to sing on the Continent this summer—the news came the day you left. Isn't that fine? I sail next week."
A sudden idea struck him. He dropped the bag he was carrying and exclaimed:
"By George, it is just the thing!"
"What?" she asked with a puzzled look.
"Let me go with you, girlie?"
"Oh, Jim, if you only would, I'd be in heaven! You have never been across. I'd chaperone you and show you everything you ought to see. Please go! Say you will! You've said you would, and you can't say no—you're going, you're going!"
"I will!" he said with decision. "You've booked your passage?"
"Yes, but I'll change it to suit you. Oh, goodie, goodie! You're going, you're going! I'm perfectly happy!"
He found business which required a week and booked his passage with Harriet's on a Cunarder which sailed in ten days.
A week later Nan and Bivens returned to their New York house. The papers were full of stories of his failing health. A sensational evening sheet issued an extra announcing that he was dying. The other papers denied the report as a fake. All reporters were denied admission to the Riverside home, and in consequence the press devoted five times the space to his illness they otherwise would have given.
Two days after her arrival Nan telephoned to Stuart.
"You must come up to see Cal to-night," she said earnestly, "he is asking for you."
"Is he really dangerously ill?" Stuart interrupted.
"It's far more serious than the papers suspect. He has had another attack of his old trouble. The doctors say he has a fighting chance—that's all. You'll come?"
"Yes, early to-morrow morning. I've an important engagement to-night that will keep me until twelve o'clock. I'm sailing for Europe day after to-morrow."
A sudden click at the other end and he was cut off. His experienced ear told him it was not an accident. The sound could only have been made by the person to whom he was talking quickly hanging up the receiver. He waited a moment and called Nan back to the telephone.
"You understand, Nan?"
"Yes, we were cut off."
"Tell him I'll be up early in the morning, by ten o'clock, surely. Good night."
The answer was the merest whisper:
"Good night."
It was just dawn when Stuart's telephone rang and he leaped from bed startled at the unusual call.
He seized the receiver and could hear no voice. Apparently some one was fumbling at the other end and he felt the impression of a woman's sleeve or dress brushing the instrument.
"Well, well," he cried in quick, impatient tones, "what is it? What's the matter?"
"Is that you?" came the faint echo of a woman's voice.
"Who is this, please?"
"Jim, don't you know my voice! It's Nan!"
"I didn't recognize it. You spoke so queerly. What is it, Nan?"
"For heaven's sake come at once. Cal was taken dangerously ill at two o'clock. The doctors have been with him every moment. He doesn't get any better. He keeps calling for you. He insisted on my telephoning. I'm frightened. I want to see you. Please come?"
"At once, of course, I'll be there in half an hour—three quarters at the most."
"Thank you," she gasped, and hung up her receiver.
Stuart's cab whirled up town through rivers of humanity pouring down to begin again the round of another day. At Fourteenth, Forty-second, Fifty-ninth, Sixty-sixth and Seventy-second the crash and roar of the subterraneous rivers caught his ear as the black torrents of men and women swirled and eddied and poured into the depths below. In all the hurrying thousands not one knew or cared a straw whether the man of millions in his silent palace on the Drive lived or died. To-morrow morning it would be the same, no matter what his fate, and the next day and the next.
"A strange old world!" he mused as his cab swung into the Drive and dashed up to the great house. A liveried servant opened the iron gates wide. He was evidently expected. The chauffeur threw the little cab up the steep turn with a rush. He sprang out and entered the hall with quick silent tread.
The house was evidently in hopeless confusion. Servants wandered in every direction without order. Doctor after doctor passed in and out and the sickening odour of medicines filled the air. A group of newspaper reporters stood at the foot of the grand stairway, discussing in subdued whispers his chances of life and the probable effect of his death on the market. The last barrier was down and through the confusion and panic Stuart could feel the chill of the silently approaching presence. Slowly, remorselessly, the white messenger of Eternity was drawing near.
Nan stood shivering at the head of the stairs, pale, dishevelled, her dark eyes wide and staring with a new expression of terror in their depths.
"How is he, Nan?"
She stared at him a moment without seeming to understand until Stuart repeated his question.
"Worse," she stammered through chattering teeth. "The doctors say he can't possibly live. He has been calling for me for the last hour. I—can't—go!"
"Why?"
"I'm afraid!"
He took her hand. It was cold and he felt a tremour run through her body at his touch.
"Come, come, Nan, you're not a silly child, but a woman who has passed through scenes in life that held tragedies darker than death!"
"I can't help it; I'm afraid," she cried, shivering and drawing closer.
"Come, drive out of your thoughts the old foolish shadows that make the end of life a horror. To me dying has come to mean the breaking of bars. You taught me this the day you killed my soul."
"Hush, Jim!"
"It's true, don't be foolish," he whispered. "The day you killed me, long ago, I was lonely and afraid at first, and then I saw that death is only the gray mystery of the dawn. Come, I'm ashamed of you. If Cal is calling, go to him at once. You must see him."
"I can't! Tell him that I'm ill."
"I won't lie to him in such an hour."
Shivering in silence she led Stuart to the door of Bivens's room and fled to her own.
On another magnificent bed of gleaming ebony inlaid with rows of opals, thousands of opals, Stuart found the little shrivelled form. The swarthy face was white and drawn, the hard thin lips fallen back from two rows of smooth teeth in pitiful, fevered weakness. He was trying to talk to the pastor of his church, while the fashionable clergymen bent over him with an expression of helpless misery, now and then wiping the perspiration from his sleek, well-fed neck.
"I want you to go into that next room and pray," the little man gasped. "I haven't done anything very good or great yet, but I have plans, great plans! Tell them to God, ask Him to give me a chance. Ten years more—or five—or one—and I'll do these things."
The shifting eyes caught sight of Stuart. He released the minister's hand and raised his own to his friend.
"Jim!"
The preacher moved aside with a sigh of relief and softly tiptoed out of the room as Stuart took the outstretched hand.
"It's awfully good of you to come up here so soon," he began feebly. "I've some plans I want you to carry out for me right away. You see I never thought before of the world as a place where there were so many men and women sick and suffering—thousands and tens and hundreds of thousands. These doctors say that every night in New York alone there are half a million people sick or bending over the beds of loved ones who are suffering, and two hundred die every day."
He paused for breath, and the black eyes stared at his friend.
"Jim, I can't die! I haven't lived! I've got to get up from here and do some things I've meant to do—all those sick people—I've got to do something for them. I'm going to build palaces for the lame, the halt, the sick, the blind. I'm going to gather the great men of science from the ends of the earth and set them to work to lift this shadow from the world."
A sudden pain seized and convulsed his frail body and Stuart called the doctors from the next room.
They stood by in helpless sympathy.
"Can't you stop this pain?" the financier gasped in anger. "What are you here for? Am I not able to buy enough morphine to stop this hellish agony?"
His family doctor bent and said:
"Your heart action is too low just now, Mr. Bivens, you can't stand it."
"Well, I can't stand this! Give it to me, I tell you!"
The doctor took a hypodermic syringe, filled it with water and injected it into his arm.
While Stuart watched the pitiful trick, his eye wandered over the magnificent trappings of the room.
"What irony of Fate!" he exclaimed, under his breath. "Not a clod hopper in the field, nor a blacksmith at his anvil who would change places with him now—the poorest negro who sings at his plow is richer."
The sufferer stared and beckoned to Stuart.
Handing him a key which he drew from beneath his pillow he cried:
"Unlock the right-hand top-drawer of that safe, Jim—the door is open. Hand me those bundles of stocks and bonds and ask those doctors to come in here."
Stuart complied with his request, and Bivens spread the brilliant coloured papers on the white covering of his bed, while the doctors drew near.
"Listen now, gentlemen," he began, still gasping with pain. "You're our greatest living doctors, I'm told. Well, I'm not willing to die, I won't die—do you hear? I'm only forty-nine years old. You see here thirty millions in gilt-edged stocks and bonds. Well, there are three of you, I'll give you ten millions each to take this stone off of my breast that's smothering me and give me five years more of life. My friend Stuart here is witness to this deed of gift—my word is pledged before him and before God—I'll make good. Do you understand? Ten millions each! Can you grasp the meaning, the sweep and power and grandeur of such an offer? Now, gentlemen, do your best for me. Just five years more—well, we won't haggle over terms—give me one year more and I'll not complain!"
The three men of science stood with folded helpless arms and made no effort to keep back the tears. They had seen many men die. It was nothing new—and yet the pity and pathos of this strange appeal found its way to the soul of each. They never envied a millionaire again.
They retired for another consultation. Stuart replaced the papers and put the key in Bivens's outstretched hand.
It was plain that he was sinking rapidly.
"Ask Nan to come here a minute," he said feebly.
Stuart walked to the door and whispered to a servant. When he returned to the bedside, the dying man looked up into his face gratefully.
"You don't know how it helps me to have you near, Jim, old boy. I'm lonely! Nan I guess is ill and broken down. I've lavished millions on her. I've given her all I possess in my will, but somehow we never found happiness. If I could only have been sure of the deep, sweet, unselfish love of one human soul on this earth! If I could only have won a girl's heart when I was poor; but I was rich, and I've always wondered whether she really loved me for my own sake. At least I've always thanked God for you. You've been a real friend. Our hearts were young together and you stood by me when—I—was—a—poor—lonely—friendless—dog——"
His voice sank low and he gasped painfully for breath. Stuart knew the end had come. He bent low and whispered:
"Give me your hand, Cal, old boy, we must say goodbye. I must go in a minute."
To his surprise the hand was not extended.
An hour later when the covering was turned back from the dead body he saw that the smooth little cold hand had gripped the key to his treasures in a last instinctive grasp.
Stuart drew the curtains of scarlet and gold, touched a spring and raised the massive broad window. The death-chamber was flooded with fresh balmy air and dazzling sunlight. All that was left of him who boasted his mastery of the world lay on the magnificent bed, a lump of white cold flesh and projecting bones. The little body looked stark and hideous in the sunlight.
The reporters down stairs were prying into his affairs like so many ferrets to find out how much he left. One of them asked Stuart his opinion.
The lawyer gazed at the young reporter, thoughtfully, while he slowly answered:
"There's only one thing sure, young man, he left it all!"
Through the open window Stuart caught the perfume of flowers on the lawn. The Italian gardeners were working on the flower beds the little man loved. The great swan-like form of a Hudson River steamer swept by, piling the white foam of the clear waters on her bow, bearing high on the side the gilded name of a man who was once Bivens's associate in great ventures, but who was now wearing a suit of convict's stripes behind the walls of a distant prison.
A long line of barges loaded with brick for new houses came floating down the stream behind a busy little tug. On the soft morning breezes the young Southerner's keen car caught the twang of a banjo and the joyous music of negro brickmen singing an old-fashioned melody of his native state; while over all, like an eternal chorus, came the dim muffled roar of the city's life.
He looked again at the lump of cold clay, and wondered what was passing in the soul of the woman who was now the heir of all his millions.
Why had she shown such strange and abject terror over his death—an event she had foreseen and desired? He recalled the hoarse unnatural voice and the blind fumbling at her telephone.
A horrible suspicion suddenly flushed through his mind!
He determined to know at once. A few skilful questions would reveal the truth. She might be able to conceal it from the world, but not from him. He called a servant and asked to see Mrs. Bivens immediately.
CHAPTER IX
THE EYES OF PITY
As he had feared, Nan refused point blank to enter the death chamber and asked him to come to her boudoir.
He found her standing by a window, apparently calm. Stuart looked at her a moment with a curious detached interest. Suddenly aware of his presence she turned, her eyes shining with tears, the first he had seen since entering the house.
"At last—at last!" she said in low broken accents. "Oh dear God, how long I've waited and despaired! At last we may belong to each other forever—body and soul! Nothing else matters now, does it? We shall forget all the blank hideous years; you'll forget it, won't you, dearest? You'll forgive me—now—say that you will?"
"I've long ago forgiven, Nan, but tell me about this sudden fatal attack. You were with him when he was stricken?"
"Yes, I took the nurse's place at midnight; I couldn't sleep."
Stuart lowered his eyes to conceal his excitement.
"How long did you stay with him?"
"Until I called you."
"And you gave him the medicine in the absence of the nurse?"
"Only one," she answered, hesitatingly, "a particular kind the doctor had not prescribed, but which he persisted in taking to relieve his pain."
"He asked for it?"
"Yes. He was suffering horribly. He begged me to give it to him. I couldn't resist his pleading."
"You didn't love him, Nan?" he went on evenly.
"You know that, Jim."
"You had wished him dead a thousand times?"
"Why do you talk so queerly? Why do you ask me such questions. Surely you——"
"And you were jealous of Harriet Woodman?"
"No! No! What could put such a thing into your head?"
"You saw in the Sunday papers, the day before his death, the sketch of Harriet's life and the fact that she was going to sing abroad?"
"Yes, yes, but what of it?"
"You saw her in my arms the night of her triumph and you knew that I was going to sail on the same ship?"
"For God's sake, are you accusing me?" she cried, in anguish.
"He asked you for medicine, Nan?" he went on remorselessly.
"Yes, a powder——"
"A poisonous powder—and you gave him one?"
"Yes."
"But he begged for two?"
"Yes."
"And you're sure you gave him but one?"
"He was begging for two—I might have given them both—it's possible, of course."
He gazed at her with a look of pity.
"I know that you did. Nan, know it as certainly as if I stood by your side and saw you press it to his lips."
"You know, Jim?" she cried feebly, her head drooping low.
"And you have no consciousness of crime in the act?"
"I only did what he wished. I couldn't know that it would be fatal."
"And you feel no remorse?"
"Why should I? His death seemed only a question of days——"
The woman began to sob.
"My only crime has been my love!"
"From the bottom of my heart I pity you!" Stuart broke in, softly. "Not merely because I know that you have committed murder, but because you lack the moral power to realize that it is a crime. The state will never reach your act with the law. But the big thing is you have no consciousness of guilt, and feel no remorse because you have no soul. You have only desires and impulses. You must have these desires fulfilled each moment. That's why you couldn't wait for me to earn my fortune honestly, and so betrayed me for gold. I can see it all now. Your beauty has blinded me. The touch of your hand, the perfume of your breath, the sweet memories of our young life together have held me in a spell."
"For God's sake, Jim!" she cried fiercely—"don't—don't talk like that! I can't endure it! You don't mean, you can't mean that you are going to turn from me now! Just when I've found your love. Tell me that you hate me, if you will, strike me, tell me I was a murderess when I stabbed your heart twelve years ago, but you must love me or I'll die! We love because we love. I'd love you if you had killed a hundred men!"
Stuart looked at her through a mist of tears.
"The spell is broken, Nan, dear, our romance is ended. I don't say it in pride or anger, I say it in sorrow—a great deep, pitying sorrow, that cuts and hurts!"
Nan suddenly threw her arms around his neck and held him convulsively.
"My darling, you can't leave me! I'm pleading for life! Had I been the shallow, soulless creature which you believe surely I might have been content with my gilded toys. But I was not. I was just a woman with a heart that could break. Suppose I have committed a crime? I dared it for love—a love so great, so wonderful, that I, who am weak and timid, afraid to be alone in the dark, faced death and hell for you."
"No, dear, I offered you my life and love, at least without the stain of crime. I offered to go with you to the ends of the earth. You didn't do this thing for love."
He slowly drew the rounded arms from his neck, and looked long and tenderly into the depths of her eyes.
The pleading voice ceased. The woman saw and understood. She had at last passed out of his world. Only the memory of a girl he had once loved and idealized remained, and that memory was now unapproachable. The living woman was no longer the figure in the mental picture. The struggle was over.
He extended his hand, clasped hers, bowed and kissed it, turned and walked quickly toward the door.
With a half smothered cry she followed.
"Jim!"
He paused and turned again, facing her with a look of infinite sadness.
"Remember," she said brokenly, "I never expect to see you again—we can not meet after this. I am looking into your dear face now with the anguish of a broken heart strangling me. You can not leave like this, we have been too much to each other."
He took her in his arms and held her close.
"Forgive me, dear," he whispered, reverently kissing her as he would have pressed the lips of the dead. "I didn't mean to be cruel—goodbye."
The door of the great house softly closed, and he was gone. A few moments later the servants found her limp form lying in a swoon on the floor.
CHAPTER X
AN EPILOGUE
Strangers no longer live in the cottage Stuart built on the hills. A jaunty sailboat nods at the buoy near the water's edge. The drone of bees from the fruit trees in full bloom on the terraces promise a luscious harvest in the summer and fall. The lawn is a wilderness of flowers and shimmering green. The climbing roses on the southeastern side of the house have covered it to the very eaves of the roof. Stuart has just cut them away from Harriet's window because they interfered with her view of the bay and sea and towering hills they love so well. And the crooning of a little mother over a baby's cradle fills the home with music sweeter to its builder than any note ever heard in grand opera.
THE END
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N.Y.