Carmen Ariza Part 189

They bowed, and he knelt beside the bed and prayed long and earnestly; prayed that the loving Father who had made man in His image would take pity on the suffering one who lay there, and, if it be His will, spare him for Jesus' sake.

He arose from his knees, and they all sat quiet for some moments. Then Doctor Morton's heavy voice broke the silence of death. "Mr. Borwell,"

he said in awful earnestness, extending his hand toward the bed, "cure that man, if your religion is anything more than a name!"

A hot flush of indignation spread over the minister's face; but he did not reply. Doctor Morton turned to the physicians.

"Gentlemen," he said solemnly, "Mr. Ames, I think, is past our aid.

There is nothing on earth that can save him. If he lives, he will be hopelessly insane." He hesitated, and turned to a maid. "Where is his daughter Kathleen?" he asked.

"Upstairs, sir, in her apartments," answered the maid, wiping her red eyes.

"See that she remains there," said the doctor gruffly. "Gentlemen,"

turning again to the physicians, "I have but one suggestion. Send for--for--that little girl, Carmen."

"It is ill-advised, Doctor," interrupted one of the men. "It would only further excite him. It might hasten the end."

"I do not agree with you," returned Doctor Morton. "As it is, he is doomed. With her here--there may be a chance."

The others shook their heads; but Doctor Morton persisted stubbornly.

Finally Doctor Haley gave his ultimatum. "If she is sent for, I shall retire from the case."

"Very well," announced Doctor Morton evenly, "then I will take it myself." He rose and went out into the vestibule where there was a telephone. Calling for the Beaubien cottage, he gave a peremptory order that Carmen come at once in the automobile which he was sending for her.

The Beaubien turned from the telephone to the girl. Her face was deathly pale.

"What is it, mother dearest?"

"They--they want--you!"

"Why--is it--is he--"

"They say he is--dying," the woman whispered.

Carmen stood for a minute as if stunned. "Why--I--didn't know--that there was--anything wrong. Mother, you didn't tell me! Why?"

The Beaubien threw her arms around the girl. Father Waite rose from the table where he had been writing, and came to them.

"Go," he said to Carmen. "The Lord is with thee! Go in this thy might!"

A few minutes later the great bronze doors of the Ames mansion swung wide to admit the daughter of the house.

Doctor Morton met the wondering girl, and led her directly into the sick-room. The other physicians had departed.

"Miss Carmen," he said gravely, "Mr. Ames is past earthly help. He can not live."

The girl turned upon him like a flash from a clear sky. "You mean, he _shall_ not live!" she cried. "For you doctors have sentenced him!"

The startled man bowed before the rebuke. Then a sense of her magnificent environment, of her strange position, and of the vivid events of the past few hours swept over her, and she became embarra.s.sed. The nurses and attendants, too, who stood about and stared so hard at her, added to her confusion.

But the doctor took her hand. "Listen," he said, "I am leaving now, but you will remain. If I am needed, one of the maids will summon me."

Carmen stood for a moment without speaking. Then she walked slowly to the bed and looked down at the man. Doctor Morton motioned to the attendants to withdraw. Then he himself stepped softly out and closed the door. When the girl turned around, she was alone--with death.

CHAPTER 19

A curious, gossiping world, dwelling only in the froth of the human mind, will not comprehend for many a year to come what took place in that dim, tapestried chamber of the rich man in those next hours. When twilight began to steal through the marble halls of the great, shrouded mansion, the nurse in charge, becoming apprehensive, softly opened the door of the sick-room and peeped in. Through the darkness she saw the girl, sitting beside the bed, with the man's right hand clasped in both of hers, and her head resting upon his shoulder. And the nurse quickly closed the door again in awe, and stole away.

The girl sat there all that day and all that night, nor would leave but for brief moments to eat, or to rea.s.sure the Beaubien over the telephone that all was well. Doctor Morton came, and went, and came again. Carmen smiled, and held his hand for a moment each time, but said little. Ames had slept. And, more, his cheeks were stained where the scalding tears had coursed down them. But the doctor would ask no questions. He was satisfied. The nurses entered only when summoned.

And three days and nights pa.s.sed thus, while Carmen dwelt with the man who, as the incarnation of error, seeking the destruction of others, had destroyed himself.

Then Doctor Morton announced to a waiting world that his patient would live--but he would say no more. And the world heard, too, that Kathleen Ames had left her father's roof--left in humiliation and chagrin when she learned that Carmen had come there to live--and had gone to England for a prolonged visit with the Dowager d.u.c.h.ess of Altern and her now thoroughly dismayed son. But Sidney came; and with him the black-veiled Beaubien. And they both knelt beside the bed of suffering; and the hand of the now quiet man slowly went out and lay for a moment upon their bowed heads, while Carmen stood near. Then Willett was sent for; and he came often after that, and took his master's scarce audible instructions, and went away again to touch the wires and keys that ended the war of hatred at Avon; that brought Father Danny in the master's private car to the great metropolitan hospital; that sent to the startled Hitt the canceled mortgage papers on the Express; and that inaugurated that great work of rest.i.tution which held the dwellers in the Ames mansion toiling over musty books and forgotten records for months to come.

What had pa.s.sed between the man and the sweet-faced girl who hovered over him like a ray of light, no one may know. That he had trod the glowing embers of h.e.l.l, his cavernous, deep-lined face and whitening hair well testified. It was said afterward that on that third day he had opened his eyes and looked straight into those of the girl. It was said that she then whispered but one word, "Father." And that, when the sound of her low voice fell upon his straining ears, he had reached out the arm that still held life, and had drawn her head down upon his breast, and wept like a motherless babe. But what he had said, if aught, about the abandoned mother who, on the banks of the distant river, years gone, had yielded her life to him and his child, no one knew. Of but one thing was there any certainty: the name of Padre Jose de Rincon had not crossed their lips during those dark days.

And so two weeks pa.s.sed. Then strong men lifted the giant from his bed and placed him in a wheel chair; and Carmen drew the chair out into the conservatory, among the ferns and flowers, and sat beside him, his hand still clasped in both of hers. That he had found life, no one who marked his tense, eager look, which in every waking moment lay upon the girl, could deny. His body was dead; his soul was fluttering feebly into a new sense of being.

But with the awakening of conscience, in the birth-throes of a new life, came the horrors, the tortures, the wild frenzy of self-loathing; and, but for the girl who clung so desperately to him, he would have quickly ended his useless existence. What had he done! G.o.d! What mad work had he done! He was a murderer of helpless babes! He was the blackest of criminals! The stage upon which the curtain had risen, whereon he saw the hourly portrayal of his own fiendish deeds, stood always before him like a haunting spectre; and as he gazed with horrified eyes, his hair grew hourly white.

And the torture was rendered more poignant by the demands of his erstwhile a.s.sociates and henchmen. They had taken fright at the first orders which had issued from the sick-bed, but now they swooped down upon the hara.s.sed man to learn what might be expected from him in the future. What were to be his policies now in regard to those manifold interests which he was pursuing with such vigor a few weeks ago? Was he still bent upon depriving Senator Gossitch of the seat which the Ames money had purchased? Was the Ketchim prosecution to continue? The Amalgamated Spinners' a.s.sociation must know at once his further plans.

The Budget needed money and advice. His great railroad projects, his mining ventures, his cotton deals, his speculations and gambling schemes--whither should they tend now? Ward bosses, dive keepers, bank presidents, lawyers, magnates, and preachers clamored for admission at his doors when they learned that he would live, but that a marvelous, incomprehensible change had swept over him.

The tired, hectored man turned to Carmen. And she called Hitt and Waite and the keen-minded Beaubien. The latter's wide business experience and worldly knowledge now stood them all in good stead, and she threw herself like a bulwark between the stricken man and the hounds that roared at his gates. There were those among them who, like Ames, had bitterly fought all efforts at industrial and social reform, and yet who saw the dawning of a new era in the realms of finance, of politics, of religion. There were those who sensed the slow awakening of the world-conscience, and who resisted it desperately, and who now sat frightened and angered at the thought of losing their great leader. Their att.i.tude toward life, like his, had been wrong from the beginning; they, like him, were striking examples of the dire effects of a false viewpoint in the impoveris.h.i.+ng of human life. But, with him, they had built up a tremendous material fabric. And now they shook with fear as they saw its chief support removed. For they must know that his was a type that was fast pa.s.sing, and after it must come the complete breakdown of the old financial order. His world-embracing gambling--which touched all men in some way, for it had to do with the very necessities of life, with crops, with railroads, with industries, and out of which he had coined untold millions--had ceased forever.

What did it portend to them?

And to him also came Reverend Darius Borwell, in whose congregation sat sanctimonious malefactors of vast wealth, whose pockets bulged with disease-laden profits from the sales of women's bodies and souls.

Reverend Borwell came to offer the sufferer the dubious consolations of religion--and inquire if his beautiful change of heart would affect the benefaction which he had designed for the new church.

Ah, this was the hour when the fallen giant faced the Apostle's awful question: What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? _For the end of those things is death!_

And then came Monsignor Lafelle, asking not to see the sick man, but the girl. And, alone with her in the great library that day, he bent low over her hand and begged that she would forgive and forget. It was he who told Mrs. Ames that flagrantly false tale of the girl's parentage. He had received it from Wenceslas, in Cartagena. It was he who, surmising the dark secret of Ames, had concluded that the supposed Infanta had been his wife. And he had returned to New York to confront him with the charge, and to make great capital out of it.

But he had never suspected for a moment Carmen's connection with the mystery. And now--

But the girl saw only the image of G.o.d in the humiliated man. And when he kissed her hand and departed, she bade him know, always, that she loved him as a brother. And he knew it, knew that her love was of the spirit--it left all for the Christ.

A few days later there was delivered at the Ames mansion a cable message from Cartagena, in reply to one which the master had sent to the lawyer, Estrella. Ames shook with suppressed excitement when he read it. Then he bade Carmen send at once for Hitt, Willett, and Captain McCall, and leave them with him for a private conference.

"She must not know! She must not know!" Ames repeated, as the three men sat leaning eagerly forward an hour later, drinking in every word he spoke. "If the mission is successful, well and good. If it fails, then our silence now will be justified, for as yet I have said nothing to her regarding him. Peace is being concluded there. Wenceslas has won--but with--but of that later. When can you get under way, McCall?"

"To-night, sir. The bunkers are full."

"Very good. I will go aboard at ten. You will weigh anchor immediately."

"What?" cried Hitt. "You will go?"

"I will!" The sudden flash of his old-time energy nearly startled them from their chairs. "And," he added, "you, Mr. Hitt, will accompany us.