The Squirrel-Cage Part 46

Miss Burgess began to cry into her handkerchief.

"It's Paul!" said Lydia with certainty. She sat down.

The weeping woman nodded.

"He has left me," Lydia continued in the same dry tone of affirmation.

"I know. We had a quarrel, and he has left me."

Miss Burgess looked up, quite wild with surprise, her sobs cut short, her face twisted. "Oh, no--no--no!" she cried, running across the room and putting her arms about the other. "No; it's not that! He--he--the man who telephoned said they were testing the dynamo, and your husband insisted on--"

Lydia came to life like a swimmer emerging into the air after a long dive. "Oh, he's hurt! He's hurt!" she cried, bounding to her feet. "I must go to him. I must go to him!"

She tore herself away from the reporter and darted toward the door. The older woman ran after her, stumbling, sobbing, putting hands of imploring pity on her.

Although no word was spoken, Lydia suddenly screamed out as though she had been stabbed. "_NO! Not that!_" she cried.

"Yes, yes, my poor darling!" said the other.

Lydia turned slowly around. "Then it is too late. We never can do better," she said.

Miss Burgess tried helplessly to unburden her kind heart of its aching sympathy. "You spoke of a little disagreement, but, oh, my dear, don't let that be the last thought. Think of the years of perfect love and knowledge you had together."

"We never knew each other," said Lydia. Her voice did not tremble.

"Oh, don't! don't!" pleaded Miss Burgess, alarmed. "You mustn't let it unhinge you so! Such a perfect marriage!"

"We were never married," said Lydia. She leaned against the wall and closed her eyes.

"Oh, help! Someone!" called the poor reporter. "Somebody come quick."

Lydia opened her eyes. She spoke still in a low, steady voice, but in it now was a shocking quality from which the other shrank back terrified.

"_I could have loved him!_" she said.

"Quick--'Stas.h.i.+e--hurry--keep the baby out of the room! Your mistress has fainted!"

BOOK IV

"BUT IT IS NOT TOO LATE FOR ARIADNE"

CHAPTER x.x.xI

PROTECTION FROM THE MINOTAUR

Dr. Melton burst open the door of the house in the Black Rock woods, and running to the owner caught hold of his bared brown arm. "Paul Hollister is dead!" he cried.

"I read the papers," said Rankin, looking down at him without stirring.

"The d.a.m.n fool!" cried the doctor, his face working. "Just now! There's another child expected."

Rankin's inscrutable gravity did not waver at this speech. He felt the hand that rested on his arm tremble, and he was thinking, as Judge Emery had so often thought, that perhaps one reason for the doctor's success in treating women was a certain community of too-responsive nerves. "You can hardly blame a man because the date of his death is inconvenient,"

he said reasonably. He drew up one of his deep chairs and pushed the doctor into it. "Sit down and get your breath. You look sick. How do you happen to be up so early? It's hardly daylight."

"Up! You don't suppose I've been to bed! Lydia--" His voice halted.

Rankin's quiet face stirred. "She feels it--terribly?"

"I can't make her out! I can't make her out!" The doctor flung this confession of failure before him excitedly. "I don't know what's in her mind, but she's evidently dangerously near--women in her condition never have a very settled mental poise, anyhow, and this sudden shock--they _telephoned_ it--and there was n.o.body there but that fool Flora--"

"Do you mean that Mrs. Hollister is out of her mind?" asked Rankin squarely.

"I don't know! I don't know, I tell you! She says strange things--strange things. When I got there yesterday afternoon, she was holding Ariadne--you knew, didn't you? that she called their little girl Ariadne--?"

Rankin sat down, white to the lips. "No," he said, "I didn't know that.

I never heard anything about--about her married life."

"Well, she was holding Ariadne as close as though she was expecting kidnapers. I came in and she looked up--G.o.d! Rankin, with what a face of fear! It wasn't grief. It was terror! She said: 'I must save the children--I mustn't let it get the children, too.' I asked her what she meant, and she went on in a whisper that fairly turned the blood backward in my veins, 'The Minotaur! He got Paul--I must hide the children from him!' And that's all she would say. I managed to put Ariadne to bed, though Lydia screamed at the idea of having her out of her sight, and I gave Lydia a bromide and made her lie down. I think she knew me--oh, yes, I'm sure she did--why, she seemed like herself in every way but that one--but all night long she has wakened at intervals with a shriek and would not be quieted until she had felt of Ariadne.

Nothing I said has had the slightest effect. I'm at my wits' end! If she doesn't get quieted soon--I finally gave her an opiate--enough to drug her senseless for a time--I don't know what to do! I don't know what to do!" He dropped his head into his hands and sat silent, s.h.i.+vering.

Rankin was looking at him, motionless, his powerful hands gripping his knees. He did not seem to breathe at all.

The doctor sprang up and began to trot about, kicking at the legs of the furniture and biting his nails. "Yes, I can, too! I do blame him for the date of his death!" He went back angrily to an earlier remark.

"Hollister killed himself as gratuitously as if he had taken a pistol!

And he did it out of sheer, devilish vanity--ambition! He had worked himself almost insane, anyhow. I'd warned him that he must take it easy, get all the rest he could. His nerves were like fiddle-strings. And what did he do? Made a night trip to Evanston to superintend a job entirely outside his work. The inspector gave the machines the regular test; but Paul wasn't satisfied. Said they hadn't come up to what he'd guaranteed to get the contract; took charge of the test himself, ran the speed up goodness knows how high. The inspector said he warned him, but Paul had got going and nothing could stop him--speed-mad--efficiency-mad--whatever you call it. And at last the fly-wheel on the engine couldn't stand it. It went through four floors and tore a hole in the roof--they say, in their ghastly phrase, there isn't enough left of him for a funeral! The other men left widows and children, too, I suppose--Oh, d.a.m.n! d.a.m.n! d.a.m.n!" He stopped short in the middle of the floor, his teeth chattering, his hand at his mouth.

Rankin's face showed that he was making a great effort to speak. "Would I be allowed to see her?" he asked finally.

The doctor spun round on him, amazed. "You? Lydia? Why in the world?"

"Perhaps I could quiet her. I have been able to quiet several delirious sick people when others couldn't."

"I don't even know she's delirious--that's what puzzles me. She seems--"

"Will you let me try?" asked Rankin again.

When they reached the house in Bellevue, Lydia was still in a heavy stupor, so Mrs. Sandworth told them, showing no surprise at Rankin's appearance. The two men sat down outside the door of her room to wait.

It was a long hour they pa.s.sed there. Rankin sat silent, holding on his knee little Ariadne, who amused herself quietly with his watch and the leather strap that held it. He took the back off, and let her see the little wheel whirring back and forth. His eyes never left the child's serious, rosy face. Once or twice he laid his large, work-roughened hand gently on her dark hair.

Dr. Melton fidgeted about, making excursions into the sick room and downstairs to look after his business by telephone, and, when he sat by the door, relieving his overburdened heart from time to time in some sudden exclamation. "Paul hasn't left a penny, of course," one of these ran, "and he hadn't finished paying for the house. But she'll come naturally to live with Julia and me." At these last words, in spite of his painful preoccupation, a tender look of antic.i.p.ation lighted his face.

Again, he said: "What crazy notion can it be about the whatever-it-was getting Paul?" Later, "Was there ever such a characteristic death?"

Finally, with a long sigh: "Poor Paul! Poor Paul! It doesn't seem more than yesterday that he was a little boy. He was a brave little boy!"