The Lash Part 23

Absently he drew forth a yellow envelope. Tearing it open he read the message. With eyes darkened with concentration he read it again. A little later he walked into a telegraph office.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE LONG ROAD

Night had fallen, the lights of the city flared under a calm clear sky that was studded with stars. A soft wind from the south had worked its will, the night was warmer than had been the day. The air was fragrant with the mystic scent of Indian summer, of green things in fields and forests, the land over, that were changing to rose and gold ere the pitiful withering to shriveled gray.

Through a quiet street leading toward Mulberry Avenue walked a man, haggard of face, misty of eye. He was a small man, almost a youth, of meagre frame and rather p.r.o.nounced garb. He carried a rusty satchel, grimy and battered, like the scarred veteran of a long and strenuous campaign.

Now he was pa.s.sing a dusky corner; one he had good cause to remember, but his thoughts were far away. So he failed to a.s.sociate the low, two-story building with the significant words of the scared woman, frowsy and unkempt, who clattered down the stairs and across the walk, halting and startling him.

"Mercy o' G.o.d, sir, what'll I do?" she cried. "He's dead, sir, a-sittin'

in his chair. Sure, I do his work for him an' I went over to see when he'd want me agin an' the door was open--I lit a light to see what was the matter--Ah! the dead, white, grinnin' face of him!--an' what'll I do?" She wrung her hands.

He had listened impatiently--what concern was it of his? "Policeman on the corner," he told her, with a backward jerk of his thumb. The charwoman ran toward the approaching officer. O'Byrn pa.s.sed on, dismissing the incident instantly from his pre-occupied mind. He was done forever with the affairs of his unknown father.

A little later he paused at a corner intersecting Mulberry Avenue and set his satchel upon the curb. He gazed down the street toward the dim outlines of an humble frame house, a solitary light s.h.i.+ning from a lower window. Long he stood silently regarding the little dwelling.

Then slowly from his pocket he drew three letters which he had written at a hotel hours before. In the wavering radiance of an adjacent electric light he scanned the addresses upon the envelopes. He stepped to a nearby letter box and consigned to it the notes prepared for Harkins and Glenwood. The third he held hesitantly for a moment, regarding it through a briny mist. So this was the end--the miserable, heart-breaking end. It was now for him the long road--alone.

"Micky!"

Swiftly he wheeled, his face alight with a trembling incredulity of joy.

His startled eyes looked straight into hers that were mystically dark in the night shadows intruding upon the s.h.i.+mmering arc from the street lamp nearby. Dressed simply in coat and gown of the brown hue he liked so well, with a hat of the same shade, she made a picture to rest his wearied eyes.

"It's good to see you, girlie," he exclaimed, a break in his voice.

"But it isn't wise, is it, when you're just over being so ill? Where have you been?"

"Only walking about, Micky. You know I grew stronger real fast. Don't you know, you were surprised to find me so much better? I've been about the house for a week, even helped mother a little the last two or three days. And tonight I couldn't rest indoors, somehow, I had to be out in this glorious air. You needn't scowl that way, I had the doctor's permission this afternoon to go out if I wanted to. Today I've heard of nothing but your story. It was grand work, Micky."

"Don't, girlie!" His tone was as if she had struck him.

One little white hand touched his arm. With quick divination her searching look read the tale told in his drawn face, in the sight of the satchel upon the curb, the letter in his hand. She gently took it from him.

"For me?"

He nodded, he could not have spoken just then. He swallowed hard while his eyes hungrily devoured the rare, fair sight of her, the slightly sharpened outlines of her lovely face, the pallor that was the heritage of illness, the sweetness of her eyes.

His letter in her hand, she moved a little away from him, then turned and walked to the curb. She rent the envelope straight across, and tearing the residue into tiny fragments, tossed the pieces like snowflakes upon the pavement. Retracing her steps, she confronted O'Byrn.

"Tell me all about it," she suggested, very gently.

With a low, bitter cry he clasped her little hand in both his own, stammering that he was unfit, that there was another blot, a repet.i.tion of the old, wretched story. She understood, and there was only a low exclamation of sympathy as she looked into his tortured face with eyes that were wonderful with forgiveness and love. For she had known instinctively long since that it must always be so, and with her woman's devotion, had resolved to help him, notwithstanding, to the end.

"What did I tell you once, dear?" she asked him low. "It's for you to always try, Micky, and what credit's for those who don't have to try?

You have tried, my boy, and you must keep on trying--for my sake.

Remember, dear, you can never fail while you try--and it's trying--it's trying that brings us--where dreams--where dreams--come--true."

The low voice was lost in a stifled sob. Her little hands, her poor, thin hands, sought her face. The tears trickled from between her clasped fingers.

Miserably he sought gently to draw her hands from her wet eyes. "Don't cry, Maisie," he begged, fighting with his constricted throat, winking blurred eyes. "Why do you? It--it kills me!"

A solitary pedestrian, pa.s.sing upon the opposite side of the quiet street, gazed at them curiously, without pausing. Neither of them noticed him and he disappeared around a corner. Meanwhile, eyes searched eyes; presently O'Byrn's turned away. They held so much of the desolation and shame of his soul, hers only love.

"Why do I cry?" she questioned sadly. "Do you remember a night--it seems so long ago!--when you asked me that? Do you need to ask me again? Only now it is so different, so--so horrible. G.o.d help me! then it was the beginning, now you mean it for the end. You are going away?"

"Yes." She could scarcely hear the word.

"Why?"

He turned upon her a face she scarcely knew, in which warred fiercely the stormy elements of his strangely complex nature. Mingling oddly with a numb, gray misery, there was something else, a troubled light like a clouded dawn. Full in the radiance from the street lamp, his eyes burned with the fire lighted from the dying, crimson embers of an autumn sunset upon a hearth of gray, and behind the flame brooded the deep shadows of despair. His voice was bitterly harsh, dissonant; a challenge to tearing winds and thunderous seas of life, like the wild note of the winging gulls.

"Why? Why not? Girl, I'm down again, I'm not fit to touch you. I've just told you. This thing was born with me, it'll die with me--I hope. If I've got to carry it--beyond--I pray G.o.d will snuff out my soul--like a candle! Can't you see it's the only way? To go--alone,--to bear it--alone,--to fight--alone,--to lie down--alone,--at the end of the long road!"

"You leave tonight?"

"Yes, dear."

"Where are you going?"

"Oh, I'm not tramping, not this time," he answered wearily. "The letters I've just mailed are for Harkins and Glenwood. I've told them I'm sorry, and G.o.d knows I mean it. But the old fever is burning my brain, girl.

I've stayed my stay here. I've gone down twice and it's too much. I've lost the right to inflict myself further on the town. If I stayed it would mean better things for me on the paper, but I can't stay. It's queer--you can't understand it--I can't myself,--but the time has come and I must be moving. It's the old voice calling. This afternoon I was looking out over the harbor--that old something came rus.h.i.+ng out of nowhere and took me by the neck--sometimes I think I'm crazy. I put my hand in my pocket, there was a message I hadn't opened. I'm called to Denver--an old a.s.sociate--something bigger than I've ever had. They're in a hurry. I wired them I'd leave tonight. I'll be with them for a while, then the trail once more."

He told it wholly without animation, the fruits of success as ashes upon his lips, only a dull hopelessness in his haggard face as he looked full in renunciation of her.

She moved a little nearer him, eyes holding his own in solemn questioning.

"What did it say--the letter--out there?" She waved her hand toward the pavement.

"What I have just told you--that I loved you too much to drag you through--what I will have to bear. I begged you to forgive--and forget--a cur."

"Micky,--do you want--to go--alone?"

He had to bend his head to catch the whispered words, though the beautiful eyes gazed in divine fearlessness straight into his own, searching his shadowed, storm-swept soul. A breathless moment his brain groped for her meaning, grasped it with incredulous joy. The hot blood pounded in his veins, his eyes implored while fearing her.

"Oh, girl, you don't mean--Ah, you don't know what you're saying. No!

I'm a dog--a dog--I'm not fit--"

Their hands entwined, her clasp tightened upon his trembling fingers.

His halting words died in his throat, he only watched her mutely, his face a queer mixture of misery and joy. Her wet eyes, twin load-stars lighting the path to Eden, smiled into his own.

"Listen!" she said. "Where you go--I'll go--whatever comes--I'm with you--clear to the white stone and the cross--and beyond--for _I love you--I love you_!"

He reeled where he stood. Ah, this love of woman, this grace of the gray world that makes for the glory of G.o.d!