V. V.'s Eyes Part 50

"Because of you! You are ill, my poor child. The shock has upset you.

You are out of your head. The boy's mind was unhinged by drink. Every one said so. He had broken his father's heart with--"

"But he did this because of me. Because of what I let everybody think of him.... Mamma, I--I must go back home. I'm sorry to upset everything so...."

The maid stood by with her tray and gla.s.s, but no hand reached for the offering.

"Back to the hotel? Of course!--you are ill, my poor dear! You need rest...."

"I mean back home. You see I can't be here now ... when this has happened. I must go now, to-night. I remember the train goes at nine-fifty-five."

Mrs. Heth, wheeling upon the maid with livid perturbation, cried:

"Get my wraps."

XX

In which Jack Dalhousie wears a New Dignity, and the Lame Stranger comes to the House of Heth.

Dalhousie had been worthless while he lived. Now he had achieved the last supreme importance. The inconsiderable of yesterday wore a mute and mighty power. So he reached over the s.p.a.ces, and broke the brilliant dinner-party at the Cafe des Amba.s.sadeurs. So Mrs. Heth and Carlisle Heth disputed, by this new great dignity that was his, and talked in the hotel bedroom, and hurriedly changed evening attire for travelling suits. And so Hugo Canning, abruptly widowed at a railway station, was left to toss wakefully that night, ridden by deepening anxieties....

For Cally had carried her extraordinary point; now that Jack Dalhousie was henceforward indifferent to all these matters.

She had said, with the deadly flatness of the mood which her mother so dreaded, that she wanted to go home to-night, and there had been no reasoning with her. Go home for what? Mrs. Heth had asked it twenty times, battling desperately against the menacing madness, now with argument and threat, now with tears and wheedlings. And Cally, proceeding dry-eyed with her dressing and bag-packing, had proved unable to produce a single solid reason.

Still, it became clear that lock and key would not keep her. The options ensuing were whether her mother should go with her, or Hugo should go, or Cally be allowed to go alone. Small choice here, indeed.

Of that evening the events following the hurried departure from the Amba.s.sadeurs were always blurred in Carlisle's memory. To Mrs. Heth each detail remained crystal-clear as long as she lived. Upon her shoulders, as usual, fell the burden of managing everything so that the least harm should befall. Defeated, and consequently hatted and cloaked, she emerged from the bedroom at quarter-past nine o'clock, commissioned by her daughter to tell Canning everything. But what was everything, and what the mere gibberish of nervous insanity, to pa.s.s forever from the horizon with a good night's sleep? Mrs. Heth, seated before her living Order of Merit in the sitting-room, interpreted her commission with a mother's wise discretion.

Canning, at this point, knew only that Carlisle was unnerved by news of the death of a friend. In the drive from the restaurant he had been cautioned to ask no questions, hysterics being intimated otherwise. Now Mrs. Heth gave him certain selected particulars: of a man who had been in love with Carlisle some years ago, though she had always discouraged him; of a misunderstanding that had arisen between them, which he, the man, had never got over; and now of his sudden decease, which came as a shock to the poor girl, awakening painful memories, and giving rise to a purely momentary sense of morbid responsibility.

"But why," said Canning, more and more mystified as he listened, "should she want to go back home?"

"I regard it," answered Mrs. Heth, "as a tribute to the dead."

"Why, she doesn't know what she's doing!... You must simply forbid her going."

"Forbid her!" groaned the little general, like one flicked upon a new wound.

And, before proceeding further, she was actually artful and strong enough to make the young man arrange--provisionally, she said,--about reservations, a matter which valuably consumed time.

If the good lady had now believed that all was lost, she would have instantly invoked Canning's authority, telling him everything. But as yet she would not risk that, clinging hard to the hope that Cally's sanity might come again with the sun of a new day. To-night she was for the greatest suppression possible, one eye perpetually on the little travelling-clock. However, the telephoning at last over, more details could not be avoided. It perforce transpired that the dead man was the villain of that unfortunate episode at the Beach, which Hugo possibly recalled,--he did,--and finally that it was worry over his disgrace, aided by unremitting potations, that had brought him to his death....

The faint frown on Hugo's brow deepened, became more troubled. He paced the floor.

"And still," said he, "I fail to see why Carlisle must go home to-night.

What does she expect to do when she gets there?"

What, indeed? Mrs. Heth mentioned again the tribute to the dead. The girl, in her shocked state, considered it unfeeling for her to remain here enjoying herself with Hugo, as if nothing had happened.

Foolish?--who saw it better than she, Mrs. Heth? But that was Cally, sweet and good at heart always, yet liable to emotional fits in upset moments when opposition only made her ill. Let her have her morbid way to-night, and she would return in twenty-four hours, her own sweet natural self....

Canning liked it less and less. Was not this clearly a moment when the strong mind of a man should a.s.sert itself over foolish feminine hysteria?

"How did she happen to get this news just now?" he asked, abruptly. "Who was it she called up, about what?"

He had lost sight of this point in the general flurry of sensation. It struck him now just too late to bring results. At the moment, the door from the bedrooms opened--exactly as it had two hours earlier, only with what a difference!--and Carlisle appeared on, the threshold, very pale and subdued, but to her lover's eye never more moving.

"I'm so sorry to bring you into all this trouble, Hugo," she said, in a strained little voice.... "And when we were having such a happy time...."

All thought of putting down his foot faded at once from Canning's mind, obliterated in a wave that went through him, half pa.s.sion, half pure tenderness. Indifferent to Mrs. Heth, he advanced and took the girl in his arms, speaking in a manly way the sympathy with her distress which rushed up in him at that moment. And then he said words that went with Carlisle as a comfort all through the night.

"Your trouble is my own, Carlisle. I'm with you in everything now, happiness or unhappiness. Whatever happens, you know my heart and strength are yours through all time."

Carlisle, too deeply moved to speak, thanked her lover with a look. The moment's silence was broken by Mrs. Heth, resolutely blowing her nose.

And then all opportunity for talk was lost in the rush for the train.

To herself she seemed to lie endlessly between sleeping and waking: and the rhythmic noises of the train sounded a continual cadence, Dalhousie's unquiet requiem. But she must have fallen sound asleep without knowing it; for her eyes opened suddenly with a start, and she was aware of the clanging of bells, the waxing and waning of men's voices, the hiss of steam and the flaring of yellow lights. Looking out under the blind, she saw that they had come to a city, which must be Philadelphia. Two hours nearer home....

Now her wakefulness had a sharper quality; Cally lay wide-eyed, in a dazed chill wonder. Once in the night she pushed up the curtain, raised herself on an elbow in the stateroom berth; and her splendid gay hair, loosened with much tossing, streamed downward over her shoulders.

Outside was a world of moonlit peace. The flying trees had tops of silver; meadows danced by in splotches of light and shade; once they sped over a lovely river. Strange to think, that if she had but said on that far-away day, "He frightened me so, I didn't want to call him hack,"--just those words, how few and simple,--she would not be hurrying home now, with everything ahead so dark, so terrifying. And, though she seemed to try a long time, she could not think now why she had not said these words, could not weigh those slight fanciful tremors against this vast icy void....

She fell asleep; woke again to more clanging and hissing; slept and dreamed badly; and suddenly sat up in the berth, confusedly, to find it broad day, and the sun streaming through the little crevice beneath the curtain. Her mother was standing braced in the aisle of the little room, dressing systematically.

"We've pa.s.sed Penton. You'd better get up," said the brisk familiar tones.

And she eyed her daughter narrowly as she asked if she had slept.

Home again. This time yesterday, who would have dreamed this possible?...

And then, after just enough time to dress, they began to pa.s.s landmarks, and presently to slacken speed; and then they were stepping down from the train, out into the hotch-potch gathering on the sunny station platform.

Both women were heavily veiled. Mrs. Heth's furtive glances discovered no one who was likely to hail them, demanding what in the world these things meant. A ramshackle hack invited and received them. And, jogging over streets crowded with a life-time's a.s.sociations, the Heths presently came to their own house, whose face they had not thought to see again these four months....

Mr. Heth was away, fis.h.i.+ng, in a spot dear to his heart, but remote from railroad or telegraph. The House of Heth looked like a deserted house; its blinds were drawn from fourth story to bas.e.m.e.nt. However, there was old Moses, bowing and running down the steps to open the carriage door and a.s.sist with the hand-luggage. He greeted the ladies with courtliness, and inquired mout anybody be sick. Answered vaguely on this point, he announced that he had breakfast ready-waiting on the table; this, though Mr. Canning's telegraph never retched him till nea'bout eight o'clock. His tone indicated a pride of accomplishment not, he hoped, unjustified.

Having removed the more superficial stains of travel, the two women sat at table in the half-dismantled dining-room. It was a meal not easily to be forgotten, made the more fantastic by Mrs. Heth's determined attempts to act as if nothing in particular had happened. From her remarks to the ancient family retainer it appeared that she and Miss Carlisle had returned home to attend to a business matter of no great consequence, overlooked in the rush of departure. And she demanded, quite as if that were the very business referred to, whether the plumber had come to stop the drip in the white-room bathroom.

The butler's reply took a not unfamiliar direction. The plumber, and his helper, had come and 'xperimented round: but they had not yet stopped the drip....

Mrs. Heth ate heartily, with a desperate matter-of-factness. It was half-past nine o'clock. Nothing had happened yet, at any rate. Beside her, Carlisle had more difficulty with her breakfast, hampered by her continuing mind's-eye picture of Jack Dalhousie, lying on his back on a floor somewhere. Might it be that, as this horror made telling so much harder, it also altered the whole necessity? There were plenty of arguments of mamma's to that effect....

"Mr. Heth got off all right, Moses?" demanded that resolute lady. "Take some more tea, Cally. You must really try to eat something, my child--"

"I have eaten--a great deal," said Cally. And pus.h.i.+ng back her chair then, she added: "I think I--I'll try to rest a little while, mamma. I feel--tired after the trip."