Part 61 (2/2)

Downstairs Mrs. Errol sat holding Anne's hand very tightly, and talking incessantly lest her ears should be constrained to listen. And Anne, pale and still, answered her as a woman talking in her sleep.

Bertie and his young bride were still absent on their honeymoon; this also by Lucas's express desire.

”It won't help me any to have you here, boy,” he had said at parting. ”A certain fuss is inevitable, but I want you out of it. I am looking to Anne Carfax to help the dear mother.”

He had known even then that he would not look in vain, and he had not been disappointed. So, sorely against his will, Bertie had submitted, with the proviso that if things went wrong he should be sent for immediately.

And thus Anne Carfax, who had lived in almost unbroken seclusion since her husband's death, now sat with Mrs. Errol's hand clasped in hers, and listened, as one listens in a nightmare, to the wailing of the wind about the garden and house, and the beat, beat, beat of her heart when the wind was still.

”Could you say a prayer, dear?” Mrs. Errol asked her once.

And she knelt and prayed, scarcely knowing what she said, but with a pa.s.sion of earnestness that left her weak, quivering in every limb.

The wind was rising. It roared in the trees and howled against the panes.

Sometimes a wild gust of rain lashed the windows. It made her think of an unquiet spirit clamouring for admittance.

”Anne dear, play to me, play to me!” besought Mrs. Errol. ”If I listen I shall go mad! No one will hear you. We are right away from his part of the house.”

And though every nerve shrank at the bare suggestion, Anne rose without a single protest and went to the piano. She sat down before it, and blindly, her eyes wide, fixed, unseeing, she began to play.

What she played she knew not. Her fingers found notes, chords, melodies mechanically.

Once she paused, but, ”Ah, go on, dear child! Go on!” urged Mrs. Errol.

And she went on, feeling vaguely through the maze of suspense that surrounded them, longing inarticulately to cease all effort, but spurred onward because she knew she must not fail.

And gradually as she played there came to her a curious sense of duality, of something happening that had happened before, of a record repeating itself. She turned her head, almost expecting to hear a voice speak softly behind her, almost expecting to hear a mocking echo of the words unspoken. ”Has the Queen no further use for her jester?” No further use!

No further use! Oh, why was she tortured thus? Why, when her whole soul yearned to forget, was she thus compelled to remember the man whose brutal pa.s.sion and insatiable thirst for vengeance had caught and crushed her heart?

And still she played on as one beneath a spell, while the memory of him forced the gates of her consciousness and took arrogant possession. She saw again the swarthy face with its fierce eyes, the haughty smile, which for her was ever tinged with tenderness. Surely--oh, surely he had loved her once! She recalled his fiery love-making, and thrilled again to the eager insistence of his voice, the mastery of his touch. And then she remembered what they said of him, that women were his slaves, his playthings, the toys he broke in wantonness and carelessly tossed aside.

She remembered how once in his actual presence she had overheard words that had made her shrink, a wonder as to who was his latest conquest, the cynical remark: ”Anyone for a change and no one for long is his motto.”

What was he doing now, she asked herself, and trembled. He had gone without word or message of any sort. Her last glimpse of him had been in that violet glare of lightning, inexpressibly terrible, with tigerish eyes that threatened her and snarling lips drawn back. Thus--thus had she seen him many a time since in the long night-watches when she had lain sleepless and restless, waiting for the dawn.

Some such vision came to her now, forcing itself upon her shrinking imagination. Vividly there rose before her his harsh face alert, cruel, cynical, and the sinewy hands that gripped and crushed. And suddenly a shuddering sense of nausea overcame her. She left the piano as one seeking refuge from a horror unutterable. Surely this man had never loved her--was incapable of love! And she had almost wished him back!

”There is someone in the entry, dear child,” whispered Mrs. Errol. ”Go and see--go and see!”

She went, moving as one stricken blind. But before she reached the door it opened and someone entered. She saw Capper as through a mist in which bodily weakness and anguished fear combined to overwhelm her. And then very steadily his arm encircled her, drew her tottering to a chair.

”It's all right,” he said in his expressionless drawl. ”The patient has regained consciousness, and is doing O.K. Are you ladies thinking of lunch? Because if so, I guess I'll join you. No, Mrs. Errol, you can't see him before to-night at the earliest. Lady Carfax, I have a message for you--the first words he spoke when he came to. He was hardly conscious when he uttered them, but I guess you'll be kind of interested to hear what they were. 'Tell Anne,' he said, 'I'm going to get well.'”

The intense deliberation with which he spoke gave her time to collect herself, but the words affected her oddly. After a moment she rose, went to Mrs. Errol, who had covered her face with both hands while he was speaking, and knelt beside her. Neither of them uttered a sound.

Capper strolled to the window, his hands deep in his pockets, and looked out upon the wind-swept gardens. He whistled very softly to himself, as a man well satisfied.

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