The Firing Line
- -
- 100%
- +
He began by dumping out into a worthless and landlocked bass-pond every brown trout in the hatchery. He then drew off the water in the brown-trout ponds, sent in men with seines and shotguns, and finally, with dynamite, purged the free waters of the brown danger for good and all.
"When Malcourt comes back," observed Portlaw, "you'll have to answer for all this."
"I won't be questioned," said Hastings, smiling.
"Oh! And what do you propose to do next?"
"If I had the money you think of spending on ruined castles "—very respectfully—"I'd build a wall in place of that mesh-wire fence."
"Why?" asked Portlaw.
"The wire deceives the grouse when they come driving headlong through the woods. My men pick up dozens of dead grouse and woodcock along the fence. If it were a wall they'd go over it. As it is, if I had my way, I'd restock with Western ruffed-grouse; cut out that pheasantry altogether, and try to breed our own native game-bird—"
"What! You can't breed ruffed-grouse in captivity!"
"I've done it, sir," said young Hastings modestly.
That night, over the plans, Portlaw voiced his distrust of Hastings and mourned aloud for Malcourt.
"That infernal Louis," he complained, waving his fat cigar, "hasn't written one line to me in a week! What the deuce is he doing down there in town? I won't stand it! The ice is out and Wayward and Cuyp and Vetchen are coming up for the fishing; and Mrs. Ascott, perhaps, is coming, and Miss Palliser, and, I hope, Miss Suydam; that makes our eight for Bridge, you see, with you and me. If Louis were here I'd have three others—but I can't ask anybody else until I know."
"Perhaps you'll get a telegram when the buckboard returns from Pride's Fall," said Hamil quietly. He, too, had been waiting for a letter that had not come. Days were lengthening into weeks since his departure from the South; and the letter he taught himself to expect had never come.
That she would write sooner or later he had dared believe at first; and then, as day after day passed, belief faded into hope; and now the colours of hope were fading into the gray tension of suspense.
He had written her every day, cheerful, amusing letters of current commonplaces which now made up his life. In them was not one hint of love—no echo of former intimacy, nothing of sadness, or regret, only a friendly sequence of messages, of inquiries, of details recounting the events of the days as they dawned and faded through the silvery promise of spring in the chill of the Northern hills.
Every morning and evening the fleet little Morgans came tearing in from Pride's Fall with the big leather mail-bag, which bore Portlaw's initials in metal, bulging with letters, newspapers, magazines for Portlaw; and now and then a slim envelope for him from his aunt, or letters, bearing the Palm Beach post-mark, from contractors on the Cardross estate, or from his own superintendent. But that was all.
His days were passed afoot in the forested hills, along lonely little lakes, following dashing trout-brooks or studying the United States Geological Survey maps which were not always accurate in minor details of contour, and sometimes made a mockery of the lesser water-courses, involving him and his surveyors in endless complications.
Sometimes, toward evening, if the weather was mild, he and Portlaw took their rods for a cast on Painted Creek—a noble trout stream which took its name from the dropping autumn glory of the sugar-bush where the water passed close to the house. There lithe, wild trout struck tigerishly at the flies and fought like demons, boring Portlaw intensely, who preferred to haul in a prospective dinner without waste of energy, and be about the matter of a new sauce with his cook.
CHAPTER XX
A NEW ENEMY
One evening in April, returning with a few brace of trout, they found the mail-bag awaiting them on the hall table; and Portlaw distributed the contents, proclaiming, as usual, his expectation of a letter from Malcourt.
There was none. And, too peevish and disappointed to even open the heterogeneous mass of letters and newspapers, he slumped sulkily in his chair, feet on the fender, biting into his extinct cigar.
"That devilish Louis," he said, "has been away for several of the most accursedly lonely weeks I ever spent.... No reflection on you, Hamil—Oh, I beg your pardon; I didn't see you were busy—"
Hamil had not even heard him. He was busy—very busy with a letter—dozens of sheets of a single letter, closely written, smeared in places—the letter that had come at last!
In the fading light he bent low over the pages. Later a servant lighted the lamps; later still Portlaw went into the library, drew out a book bound in crushed levant, pushed an electric button, and sat down. The book bound so admirably in crushed levant was a cook-book; the bell he rang summoned his cook.
In the lamplit living-room the younger man bent over the letter that had come at last. It was dated early in April; had been written at Palm Beach, carried to New York, but had only been consigned to the mails within thirty-six hours:
"I have had all your letters—but no courage to answer. Now you will write no more.
"Dear—this, my first letter to you, is also my last. I know now what the condemned feel who write in the hour of death.
"When you went away on Thursday I could not leave my room to say good-bye to you. Gray came and knocked, but I was not fit to be seen. If I hadn't looked so dreadfully I wouldn't have minded being ill. You know that a little illness would not have kept me from coming to say good-bye to you.
"So you went away, all alone with Gray. I remained in bed that day with the room darkened. Mother and Cecile were troubled but could not bring themselves to believe that my collapse was due to your going. It was not logical, you know, as we all expected to see you in a week or two in New York.
"So they had Dr. Vernam, and I took what he prescribed, and nobody attached any undue importance to the matter. So I was left to myself, and I lay and thought out what I had to do.
"Dear—I knew there was only one thing to do; I knew whither my love—our love—was carrying me—faster and faster—spite of all I'd said. Said! What are words beside such love as ours? What would be my affection for dad and mother beside my love for you? Would your loyalty and your dear self-denial continue to help me when they only make me love you more intensely?
"There is only one thing clear in all this pitiful confusion; I—whom they took and made their child—cannot sacrifice them! And yet I would!—oh, Garry!—I would for you. There was no safety for me at all as long as there was the slightest chance to sacrifice everything—everybody—and give myself to you.
"Listen! On the second day after you left I was sitting with mother and Cecile on the terrace. We were quietly discussing the closing of the house and other harmless domestic matters. All at once there swept over me such a terrible sense of desolation that I think I lost my mind; for the next thing I knew I was standing in my own room, dressed for travelling—with a hand-bag in my hand.
"It was my maid knocking that brought me to my senses: I had been going away to find you; that was all I could realise. And I sank on my bed, trembling; and presently fell into the grief-stricken lethargy which is all I know now of sleep.
"But when I woke to face the dreadful day again, I knew the time had come. And I went to mother that evening and told her.
"But, Garry, there is never to be any escape from deception, it seems; I had to make her think I wanted to acknowledge and take up life with my husband. My life is to be a living lie!…
"As I expected, mother was shocked and grieved beyond words—and, dearest, they are bitterly disappointed; they all had hoped it would be you.
"She says there must positively be another ceremony. I don't know how dad will take it—but mother is so good, so certain of his forgiving me.
"It wrings my heart—the silent astonishment of Cecile and Gray—and their trying to make the best of it, and mother, smiling for my sake, tender, forgiving, solicitous, and deep under all bitterly disappointed. Oh, well—she can bear that better than disgrace.
"I've been crying over this letter; that's what all this blotting means.
"Now I can never see you again; never touch your hand, never look into those brown eyes again—Garry! Garry!—never while life lasts.
"I ask forgiveness for all the harm my love has done to you, for all the pain it has caused you, for the unhappiness that, please God, will not endure with you too long.
"I have tried to pray that the pain will not last too long for you; I will try to pray that you may love another woman and forget all this unhappiness.
"Think of me as one who died, loving you. I cling to this paper as though it were your hand. But—
"Dearest—dearest—Good-by.
"SHIELA CARDROSS."When Portlaw came in from his culinary conference he found Hamil scattering the black ashes of a letter among the cinders.
"Well, we're going to try an old English receipt on those trout," he began cheerfully—and stopped short at sight of Hamil's face.
"What's the matter?" he asked bluntly.
"Nothing."
Hamil returned to his chair and picked up a book; Portlaw looked at him for a moment, then, perplexed, sorted his mail and began to open the envelopes.
"Bills, bills," he muttered, "appeals for some confounded foundlings' hospital—all the eternal junk my flesh is heir to—and a letter from a lawyer—let them sue!—and a—a—hey! what the devil—what the—"
Portlaw was on his feet, startled eyes fairly protruding as he scanned incredulously the engraved card between his pudgy fingers.
"O Lord!" he bellowed; "it's all up! The entire bally business has gone up! That pup of a Louis!—Oh, there's no use!—Look here, Hamil! I tell you I can't believe it, I can't, and I won't—Look what that fool card says!"
And Hamil's stunned gaze fell on the engraved card:
"Mr. and Mrs. Neville Cardross have the honour of announcing the marriage of their daughter Shiela to Mr. Louis Malcourt."
The date and place followed.
Portlaw was making considerable noise over the matter, running about distractedly with little, short, waddling steps. Occasionally he aimed a kick at a stuffed arm-chair, which did not hurt his foot too much.
It was some time before he calmed enough to pout and fume and protest in his usual manner, appealing alternately to Heaven as witness and to Hamil for corroboration that he had been outrageously used.
"Now, who the devil could suspect him of such intention!" wailed poor Portlaw. "God knows, he was casual with the sex. There have been dozens of them, Hamil, literally dozens in every port!—from Mamie and Stella up to Gladys and Ethelberta! Yes, he was Harry to some and Reginald to others—high, low—and the game, Hamil—the game amused him; but so help me kings and aces! I never looked for this—never so help me; and I thought him as safe with the Vere-de-Veres as he was with the Pudding Sisters, Farina and Tapioca! And now"—passionately displaying the engraved card—"look who's here!… O pip! What's the use."
Dinner modified his grief; hope bubbled in the Burgundy, simmered in the soup, grew out of gravy like the sturdy, eternal weed she is, parasitic in the human breast.
"He's probably married a million or so," suggested Portlaw, mollified under the seductive appeal of a fruit salad dressed with a mixture containing nearly a hundred different ingredients. "If he has I don't see why he shouldn't build a camp next to mine. I'll give him the land—if he doesn't care to pay for it," he added cautiously. "Don't say anything to him about it, Hamil. After all, why shouldn't he pay for the land?… But if he doesn't want to—between you and me—I'll come within appreciable distance of almost giving him what land he needs.... O gee! O fizz! That damn Louis!… And I'm wondering—about several matters—"
After dinner Portlaw settled down by the fire, cigar lighted, and began to compose a letter to Malcourt, embodying his vivid ideas concerning a new house near his own for the bridal pair.
Hamil went out into the fresh April night. The young grass was wet under the stars; a delicate fragrance of new buds filled the air.
He had been walking for a long time, when the first far hint of thunder broke the forest silence. Later lightning began to quiver through the darkness; a wind awaking overhead whispered prophecy, wailed it, foreboding; then slowly the woods filled with the roar of the rain.
He was moving on, blindly, at random, conscious only of the necessity of motion. Where the underbrush halted him he sheered off into the open timber, feeling his way, falling sometimes, lying where he fell for a while till the scourge of necessity lashed him into motion again.
About midnight the rain increased to a deluge, slackened fitfully, and died out in a light rattle of thunder; star after star broke out through the dainty vapours overhead; the trees sighed and grew quiet. For a while drumming drops from the branches filled the silence with a musical tattoo, then there remained no sound save, far away in the darkness, the muffled roar of some brook, brimming bank-high with the April rain. And Hamil, soaked, exhausted, and believing he could sleep, went back to the house. Toward morning sleep came.
He awoke restless and depressed; and the next morning he was not well; and not quite as well the next, remaining in his room with a headache, pestered by Portlaw and retinues of servants bearing delicacies on trays.
He had developed a cold, not a very bad one, and on the third day he resumed his duties in the woods with Phelps and Baker, the surveyors, and young Hastings.
The dull, stupid physical depression hung on to him; so did his cold; and he found breathing difficult at night. The weather had turned very raw and harsh, culminating in a flurry of snow.
Then one morning he appeared at breakfast looking so ghastly that Portlaw became alarmed. It seemed to be rather late for that; Hamil's face was already turning a dreadful bluish white under his host's astonished gaze, and as the first chill seized him he rose from the table, reeling.
"I—I am sorry, Portlaw," he tried to say.
"What on earth have you got?" asked Portlaw in a panic; but Hamil could not speak.
They got him to the gardener's cottage as a precautionary measure, and telephoned to Utica for trained nurses, and to Pride's Fall for a doctor. Meanwhile, Hamil, in bed, was fast becoming mentally irresponsible as the infection spread, involving both lungs, and the fever in his veins blazed into a conflagration. That is one way that pneumonia begins; but it ought not to have made such brutally quick work of a young, healthy, and care-free man. There was not much chance for him by the next morning, and less the following night when the oxygen tanks arrived.
Portlaw, profoundly shocked and still too stunned by the swiftness of the calamity to credit a tragic outcome, spent the day in a heavily bewildered condition, wandering, between meals, from his house to the cottage where Hamil lay, and back again to the telephone.
He had physicians in consultation from Utica and Albany; he had nurses and oxygen; he had Miss Palliser on the telephone, first in New York, then at Albany, and finally at Pride's Fall, to tell her that Hamil was alive.
She arrived after midnight with Wayward. Hamil was still breathing—if it could be called by that name.
Toward dawn a long-distance call summoned Portlaw: Malcourt was on the end of the wire.
"Is Hamil ill up at your place?"
"He is," said Portlaw curtly.
"Very ill?"
"Very."
"How ill?"
"Well, he's not dead."
"Portlaw, is he dying?"
"They don't know yet."
"What is the sickness?"
"Pneumonia. I wish to heaven you were here!" he burst out, unable to suppress his smouldering irritation any longer.
"I was going to ask you if you wanted me—"
"You needn't ask such a fool question. Your house is here for you and the servants are eating their heads off. I haven't had your resignation and I don't expect it while we're in trouble.... Mrs. Malcourt will come with you, of course."
"Hold the wire."
Portlaw held it for a few minutes, then:
"Mr. Portlaw?"—scarcely audible.
"Is that you, Mrs. Malcourt?"
"Yes.... Is Mr. Hamil going to die?"
"We don't know, Mrs. Malcourt. We are doing all we can. It came suddenly; we were caught unprepared—"
"Suddenly, you say?"
"Yes, it hit him like a bullet. He ought to have broken the journey northward; he was not well when he arrived, but I never for a moment thought—"
"Mr. Portlaw—please!"
"Yes?"
"Is there a chance for him?"
"The doctors refuse to say so."
"Do they say there is no chance?"
"They haven't said that, Mrs. Malcourt. I think—"
"Please, Mr. Portlaw!"
"Yes, madam!"
"Will you listen very carefully, please?"
"Certainly—"
"Mr. Malcourt and I are leaving on the 10.20. You will please consult your time-table and keep us informed at the following stations—have you a pencil to write them down?… Are you ready now? Ossining, Hudson, Albany, Fonda, and Pride's Fall.... Thank you.... Mr. Malcourt wishes you to send the Morgan horses.... If there is any change in Mr. Hamil's condition before the train leaves the Grand Central at 10.20, let me know. I will be at the telephone station until the last moment. Telegrams for the train should be directed to me aboard "The Seminole"—the private car of Mr. Cardross.... Is all this clear?… Thank you."
With a confused idea that he was being ordered about too frequently of late Portlaw waddled off bedward; but sleep eluded him; he lay there watching through his window the light in the window of the sick-room where Hamil lay fighting for breath; and sometimes he quivered all over in scared foreboding, and sometimes the thought that Malcourt was returning seemed to ease for a moment the dread load of responsibility that was already playing the mischief with his digestion.
A curry had started it; a midnight golden-buck superimposed upon a miniature mince pie had, to his grief and indignation, continued an outrageous conspiracy against his liver begun by the shock of Hamil's illness. But what completed his exasperation was the indifference of the physicians attending Hamil who did not seem to appreciate the gravity of an impaired digestive system, or comprehend that a man who couldn't enjoy eating might as well be in Hamil's condition; and Portlaw angrily swallowed the calomel so indifferently shoved toward him and hunted up Wayward, to whom he aired his deeply injured feelings.
"What you need are 'Drover's Remedies,'" observed Wayward, peering at him through his spectacles; and Portlaw unsuspiciously made a memorandum of the famous live-stock and kennel panacea for future personal emergencies.
The weather was unfavourable for Hamil; a raw, wet wind rattled the windows; the east lowered thick and gray with hurrying clouds; volleys of chilly rain swept across the clearing from time to time.
Portlaw and Wayward sat most of the time in the big living-room playing "Canfield." There was nothing else to do except to linger somewhere within call, and wait. Constance Palliser remained near whichever nurse happened to be off duty, and close enough to the sick-room to shudder at what she heard from within, all day, all night, ceaselessly ominous, pitiable, heart-breaking.
At length Wayward took her away without ceremony into the open air.
"Look here, Constance, your sitting there and hearing such things isn't helping Garry. Lansdale is doing everything that can be done; Miss Race and Miss Clay are competent. You're simply frightening yourself sick—"
She protested, but he put her into a hooded ulster, buckled on her feet a pair of heavy carriage boots, and drew her arm under his, saying: "If there's a chance Garry is having it, and you've got to keep your strength.... I wish this mist would clear; Hooper telephoned to Pride's for the weather bulletin, but it is not encouraging."
They walked about for an hour and finally returned from the wet woodland paths to the bridge, leaning on the stone parapet together.
A swollen brook roared under the arches, carrying on its amber wave-crests tufts of green grass and young leaves and buds which the promise of summer had tenderly unfolded to the mercy of a ruthless flood.
"Like those young lives that go out too early," murmured Constance. "See that little wind-flower, Jim, uprooted, drowning—and that dead thing tumbling about half under water—"
Wayward laid a firm hand across hers.
"I don't mean to be morbid," she said with a pathetic upward glance, "but, Jim, it is too awful to hear him fighting for just—just a chance to breathe a little—"
"I think he's going to get well," said Wayward.
"Jim! Why do you think it? Has any—"
"No.... I just think it."
"Is there any reason—"
"None—except you."
His voice within the last month or two had almost entirely lost its indistinct and husky undertone; the clear resonant quality, which had always thrilled her a little as a young girl, seemed to be returning; and now she felt, faintly, the old response awaking within her.
"It is very sweet of you to believe he'll live because I love him," she said gently.
Wayward drew his hand from hers and, folding his arms, leaned on the parapet inspecting the turbid water through his spectacles.
"There are no fights too desperate to be won," he said. "The thing to do is to finish—still fighting!"
"Jim?"
"Yes."
This time her hand sought his, drew it toward her, and covered it with both of hers.
"Jim," she said tremulously, "there is something—I am horribly afraid—that—perhaps Garry is not fighting."
"Why?" he asked bluntly.
"There was an—an attachment—"
"A what?"
"An unfortunate affair; he was very deeply in love—"
"Not ridiculously, I hope!"
"I don't know what you mean.... He cared more than I have believed possible; I saw him in New York on his way here and, Jim, he must have known then, for he looked like death—"
"You mean he was in love with that Cardross girl?"
"Oh, yes, yes!… I do not understand the affair; but I tell you, Jim, the strangest part was that the girl loved him! If ever a woman was in love with a man, Shiela Cardross was in love with Garry! I tell you I know it; I am not guessing, not hazarding an opinion; I know it.... And she married Louis Malcourt!… And, Jim, I have been so frightened—so terrified—for Garry—so afraid that he might not care to fight—"
Wayward leaned there heavily and in silence. He was going to say that men do not do such things for women any longer, but he thought of the awful battle not yet ended which he had endured for the sake of the woman beside him; and he said nothing; because he knew that, without hope of her to help him, the battle had long since gone against him. But Garry had nothing to fight for, if what Constance said was true. And within him his latent distrust and contempt for Malcourt blazed up, tightening the stern lines of his sun-burnt visage.
"Portlaw says that Louis is coming to-night, and that young Mrs. Malcourt is with him," he observed.
"I know it.... I was wondering if there was any way we could use her—make use of her—"
"To stir up Garry to fight?"
"Y-yes—something like that—I am vague about it myself—if it could be done without anybody suspecting the—O Jim!—I don't know; I am only a half-crazed woman willing to do anything for my boy—"
"Certainly. If there's anything that might benefit Garry you need not hesitate on account of that little beast Malcourt—"
She said in her gentle, earnest way: "Louis Malcourt is so very strange. He has treated Virginia dreadfully; they were engaged—they must have been or she could not have gone all to pieces the way she has.... I cannot understand it, Jim—"
"What's Louis coming here for?"
"Mr. Portlaw begged him to come—"
"What for? Oh, well, I guess I can answer that for myself; it's to save Portlaw some trouble or other—"
"You are very hard on people—very intolerant, sometimes—"
"I have no illusions concerning the unselfishness of Billy Portlaw. Look at him tagging after the doctors and bawling for pills!—with Garry lying there! He hustled him into a cottage, too—"