The Seventh Noon Part 26

"It's only half a day."

"But that's twelve hours!"

"Do you think that long?"

"Yes. That seems a very long while to me."

"It is soon gone."

"Too soon."

"Then comes the night and then the morning and then you 'll bring him home."

"Then I 'll bring him home."

What a new meaning that word home had when it fell from her lips. What a new meaning everything had.

She turned aside to address some one in the room and then her voice came in complaint.

"The nurse is here with my medicine."

"Then close your eyes and swallow it quickly. I 'll telephone you later and inquire how it tasted."

"Thank you. Good bye."

"Good bye."

He hung up the receiver and settled down to the grim task of counting the pa.s.sing minutes which were draining his life as though each minute were a drop of blood let from an artery. And all the company he had for it was this poor devil on the bed who grimaced as he breathed.

He folded his arms. If this, too, was a part of the cost he must pay it like a man.

CHAPTER XVI

_The Fourth Day_

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 establis.h.i.+ng 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 G.o.d!"

"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 s.h.i.+rk 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.