The morning of Tuesday, May twenty-eighth,
found Donaldson still sitting in the chair, facing
the form upon the bed. He had not undressed,
and had slept less than an hour. He was now waiting
for eight o’clock, when he had received permission
from the nurse to ring up Miss Arsdale again.
With some tossing Arsdale had slept
on without awaking fully enough to be conscious of
his surroundings. Now, however, Donaldson became
aware that the fellow’s brain was clearing.
He watched the process with some interest.
It was an hour later before the man began to realize
that he was in a strange room, and that another was
in the room with him. It was evident that he
was trying hard, and yet with fear of whither the
road might lead him, to trace himself back. He
had singled out Donaldson for some time, observing
him through half-closed eyes, before he ventured to
speak.
“Where am I?” he finally faltered huskily.
“In my charge.”
“Who are you?”
“One Donaldson.”
“I never heard of you.”
“That is not improbable.”
Arsdale reflected upon this for some
time before he gained courage to proceed further.
“I ’m going to get up,” he announced,
at the end of some five minutes.
“No, you ’re not. You are going
to stay right where you are.”
“What right have you to keep me here?”
he demanded.
“The right of being stronger than you.”
Arsdale struggled feebly to his elbow,
but Donaldson pushed him back with a pressure that
would not have made a child waver. He stood
beside him wondering just how much the dulled brain
was able to grasp. The long night had left him
with little sympathy. The more he had thought
of that blow, the greater the aversion he felt towards
Arsdale. If the boy had n’t struck her
he would feel some pity for him, but that blow given
in the dark against a defenseless woman the
one woman who had been faithful and kind to him that
was too much. It had raised dark thoughts there
in the night.
Arsdale, his pupils contracted to
a pin-point, stared back at him. Yet his questions
proved that he was now possessed of a certain amount
of intelligence. If he was able to realize that
he was in a strange place, he might be able to realize
some other things that Donaldson was determined he
should.
“You are n’t very clear-headed
yet, but can you understand what I am saying to you
now?”
Arsdale nodded weakly.
“Do you remember anything of
what you did yesterday?” he demanded, in a vibrant
voice that engraved each word upon the sluggish brain.
“No,” answered the man quailing.
“No? Then I’ll tell
you. You came back to the house and you struck
your sister.”
“No! No! Not that! I didn’t
do that.”
Donaldson responded to a new hope.
This seemed to prove that the conscience of the man
was not dead. It came to him as a relief.
He was relentless, not out of hate, but because so
much depended upon establishing the fact that the
fellow still had a soul.
“Yes. You did,”
he repeated, his fingers unconsciously closing into
his palms. “You struck her down.”
“Good God!”
“Think of that a while and then I ’ll
tell you more.”
“Is she hurt, is she badly hurt?”
Without replying Donaldson returned
to his chair on the opposite side of the bed and watched
him as a physician might after injecting a medicine.
Arsdale stared back at him in dumb terror. Donaldson
could almost see the gruesome pictures which danced
witch-like through his disordered brain. He
did n’t enjoy the torture, but he must know just
how much he had upon which to work.
It was in the early hours of the morning
that Donaldson had become conscious of the new and
tremendous responsibility which rested upon him.
To leave Arsdale behind him alive in such a condition
as this would be to leave the curse upon the girl, would
be to desert her to handle this mad-man alone.
He had seen red at the thought of it. It would
be to brand his own act with unpardonable cowardice;
it would be to go down into his grave with the helpless
cries of this woman ringing in his ears; it would
be to shirk the greatest and most sacred duty that
can come to a man. The cold sweat had started
upon his forehead at the thought of it.
The inexorable alternative was scarcely
less ghastly. Yet in the face of this other
the alternative had come as a relief. If it cost
him his immortal soul, this other should not be left
behind to mar a fair and unstained life. He
would throttle him as he lay there upon the bed before
he would leave him behind to this. He would go
to his doom a murderer before he would leave Arsdale
alive to do a fouler murder. That should be his
final sacrifice, his ultimate renunciation.
In its first conception he had been appalled by the
idea, but slowly its inevitability had paralyzed thought.
It had made him feel almost impersonal. Considering
the manner in which he had been thrust into it, it
seemed, as it were, an ordinance of Fate.
Though this had now become fixed in
his mind, there was still the scant hope that he had
grasped from what he had observed in Arsdale’s
manner. Given the morsel of a man, and there
was still hope. Therefore it was with considerable
interest that he watched for some evidence of the
higher nature, even if only expressed in the crude
form of shame. At times Arsdale looked like
a craven cornered to his death at times
like a man struggling with a great grief at
times like a man dazed and uncomprehending.
To himself he moaned continuously.
Frequently he rose to his elbow with the cry, “Is
she hurt?”
Still in silence Donaldson watched
him. Once Arsdale fell forward on his chin,
where he lay motionless, his eyes still upon Donaldson.
The latter helped him back to the pillow, but Arsdale
shrank from his touch.
“Your eyes!” he gasped,
covering his own with his trembling hand. “They
are the eyes of a devil. Take them off me take
them off!”
But Arsdale could not endure his blindness
long. It made the ugly visions worse.
So, he saw the girl with red blood streaming down her
cheeks.
The sight of this writhing soul raised
many new speculations in Donaldson’s mind especially
in connection with its possible outcome. In the
matter of religion he was negative, neither believing
any professed creed nor denying any. He had
received no early impetus, and had up to now been
too preoccupied with his earthly interests, with no
great grief or happiness to arouse him, to formulate
any theory in his own mind. Even at the moment
he had swallowed the poison the motive prompting him
to it had been so intensely material that it had started
but the most momentary questions. It was the
thought of Mrs. Wentworth, the sight of the baby,
the indefinable boundaries of his own love it
was love that pressed the question in upon him.
Now the other extreme embodied in the sight of the
man before him, capped by the acute query of what
the sin of murder might mean, sharpened it to a real
concern. If such love as the mother and the girl
connoted forbade the conception that love expired
with life, the torture of this other stunted soul
seemed prophetic of what might be awaiting his own
future, dwarfed by the shifty expedient he had adopted
to check its development. If punishment counted
for anything, he was, to be sure, receiving his full
portion right here on earth. The realization
of what he was leaving was an inquisition of the most
exquisite order. But would this be the end?
His consciousness, as he sat there, refused to allow
the hope, refused even to allow the hope
to be desired.
So, face to face, each of these two
struggled with the problem of his next step.
To each of them life had a new and terrible significance.
From a calm sea it had changed to wind-rent chaos.
It was revealing its potentialities, lamb-like
when asleep, lion-like when roused. Tangle-haired
Tragedy had stalked forth into the midst of men going
about their business.
The man on the bed broke out again,
“Why did n’t I die before that?
Why did n’t I die before?”
Then he turned upon Donaldson with a new horror in
his eyes.
“I did n’t kill her?” he gasped.
The answer to his cry came though
he could not interpret it in the ringing
of the telephone. Donaldson crossed to it, while
Arsdale cowered back in bed as though fearing this
were news of some fresh disaster. To him the
broken conversation meant nothing; to Donaldson it
brought a relief that saved him almost from madness.
“Is that you, Mr. Donaldson?” she asked.
“Yes. And you you are well?”
There was a pause, and then came the query again,
“Is that you?”
“Yes, can’t you hear my voice?”
“It does n’t sound like your voice.
Is anything the matter?”
“No, nothing. I don’t understand
what you mean.”
She hesitated again and then answered,
“It it made me almost afraid.”
“It’s your nerves. Did you sleep
well?”
“Yea. And is Ben all right?”
“Yes.”
“There it is again,” she broke in.
“Your voice sounds harsh.”
“That must be your imagination.”
“Perhaps,” she faltered. “Are
you going to bring him home to-day?”
“Probably not until this evening.
But,” he broke in, “I shall come sooner
myself. I shall come this morning. Will
you tell that gentleman waiting near the gate to come
down here?”
“What gentleman?”
“You probably have n’t seen him.
I put him there on guard.”
“You are thoughtful. Your voice is natural
again. Is Ben awake now?”
“Yes.”
“And does he know?”
“Some things.”
“Mr. Donaldson,” she said,
and he caught the shuddering fear in her voice, “are
you keeping anything from me?”
“I don’t know what you
mean, but I will come up so that you may see there
has been no change.”
“I still think you are concealing something.”
“Nothing that is not better concealed; nothing
that you could help.”
“I should rather know. I do not like being
guarded in that way.”
“We all have to guard one another. You
in your turn guard me.”
“From what?”
“Many things. You are doing it now this
minute.”
“From what?” she insisted.
“From myself.”
“Oh, I don’t know what
you mean. I think you had better come up here
at once if it is safe to leave Ben.”
“I shall make it safe. Don’t forget
to send down my man.”
He hung up the receiver and turned
to Arsdale. The latter must have noticed instantly
the change in Donaldson’s expression, for he
rose to his elbow with eager face.
“You’ll tell me before you go! You’ll
tell before ”
“You didn’t kill,” answered Donaldson.
“Thank God!”
“She is n’t even wounded seriously.”
“She knows that it was I?”
“Yes. She knows.”
“How she must hate me, gentle Elaine.”
“It is hard for her to hate any one.”
“You think she she might forgive?”
“I don’t know. That remains to be
seen.”
The man buried his face in his arms
and wept. This was not maudlin sentimentality;
it struck deeper.
“Are you ready to do anything
more than regret?” demanded Donaldson.
“Are you ready to make a fight to quit that stuff?”
“So help me as long as I live ”
“Don’t tell me that.
I want you to think it over a while. I ’m
going to have some one stay here with you until I
get back this afternoon. Will you remain quiet?”
“Yes.”
“And remember that even if by
chance you did n’t do much harm, still you struck.
You struck a woman; you struck your sister.”
Arsdale cringed. Each word was
a harder blow than he, even in his madness, could
strike.
“It’s a terrible
thing to remember. But but it will
be always with me. It will never leave me.”
As soon as the detective arrived Donaldson
gave him his instructions, adding,
“Look out for tricks, and be
ready to tell me all he says to you.”
“I ’ve had ’em before,”
answered the man.