Part 34 (2/2)

Thayer had judged that it would he well to invite himself to stay to dinner at the cottage. Lorimer had been in one of his worst moods, and even Thayer had found it wellnigh impossible to keep the talk brisk and amicable. He had remained until he had seen that Lorimer was at last yielding to the inevitable drowsiness of his long day in the open air; then he had started back to the hotel. Once outside the cottage, however, he had squared his shoulders and drawn a deep breath of relief.

He needed mental ozone; but even physical ozone was better than mental nitrous oxide.

And now he was standing at the snow-veiled window, looking across at the cottage while he hummed to himself the recurring, haunting Famine Theme,--

”_O the famine and the fever!

O the wasting of the famine!

O the blasting of the fever!_”

He had no notion of the truth of his words. Had he done so, the cottage, not the hotel, would have held him, that day, and the tragedy, so long averted, might have been warded off a little longer. But fate willed otherwise. To Thayer's mind, Lorimer, storm-bound and weary from his tramp of the day before, would spend the day, drowsing, novel in hand, before the open fire. Thayer, in his own absolute integrity, could never imagine the truth: that Lorimer's trusty attendant had at last yielded to the temptation of the oft-repeated bribe and had given into Lorimer's hands the bottle from which he was used to measure out, medicine-wise, the daily lessening allowance of brandy. He could not know how often, all that day, Beatrix went to the window and looked out across the storm in the hope of seeing him come striding to her through the snow. Had it been possible, she would have sent for him; but it was a day when women are safest inside a house, and she dared not remove either Lorimer's man or the old butler from their close guard over her husband. She had been utterly opposed to bringing the faithful old butler with them; but now she was glad that she had yielded to his begging. He had been with her father since her childhood, and had insisted upon following ”Miss Beatrix” into her new home. Without him now, she would have been absolutely, hopelessly alone.

Thayer spent a quiet, contented day. For the time being, he had dismissed Lorimer from his mind, and he gave himself up to the luxury of taking thought for no one but himself. The sensation was very luxurious from its very novelty. He wrote a long letter to Arlt, responded to a dozen notes of invitation which had pursued him from the city, loitered about the office and ended the day with a novel which had reached him when the mail came in, that noon. It was still early when he went to bed. As he drew the shades, from sheer force of habit he glanced across at the cottage. Its lights were burning brightly, their quiet steadiness giving no hint of the hideous carnival within.

No healthy man can go to bed, two hours before his usual time, and expect to sleep peacefully till dawn. At four o'clock, Thayer waked suddenly, with the firm belief that his slumber must have reached quite around the clock. He struck a match and looked at his watch.

Restlessly he rose and began to walk up and down the room. The storm had increased during the night. He could hear the snow sifting against the windows and, far off at a distant corner of the house, a loosened blind was beating to and fro in the wind. The sound echoed drearily through the almost deserted barracks, and added infinitely to the loneliness of the wilderness, and of the night, and of the storm.

Thayer paused at the window, raised the shade and peered out into the night. At first, he could see only the darkness, no longer black, but gray with the swirling snow. The ceaseless, pitiless fall of the flakes fascinated him, and he stood long, watching them take shape in the distance, come whirling against the gla.s.s and slide aimlessly down the pane, as so many had fallen before them. Then, as the storm lost something of its fury, he glanced up and out across the night. The next instant, his face was pressed against the pane, while his clasped fingers s.h.i.+elded his eyes from the light within the room. In the Lorimers' cottage, half a mile away, the lights were still burning. On such a night and at such an hour, those lights meant trouble: illness, or perhaps something infinitely worse.

He had stood at the window longer than he had realized, and the clock in the office struck five as Thayer, fully dressed, stepped out into the hall. With the waning of the night, the storm was increasing again and, strong man as he was, Thayer faltered as he opened the door and went out into the darkness.

Four times he tried to beat his way against the wind, to force a path through the wet, heavy drifts. Four times, buffeted and almost spent, he was driven back to the shelter of the veranda. The office clock struck six, as he went inside the house to find a s.h.i.+vering servant sweeping out the office.

”Get me some snowshoes,” he ordered briefly. ”The lights have burned all night in Mr. Lorimer's cottage; I am afraid they may be ill and in need of help. I thought I could get to them; but in this storm it is impossible, unless I can have some shoes.”

By some trick of the brain, anxious and impatient as he was, the Famine Theme recurred to his mind, and the servant, coming back with the shoes, found him singing it softly to himself. The words died away into inarticulate humming, as Thayer bent over to fasten the straps. Then, b.u.t.toning his coat closely and pulling his cap down over his eyes, Thayer opened the door for the second time and went striding away across the gray, tempestuous darkness which had shut down again impenetrably between himself and those steady, ominous lights.

CHAPTER TWENTY

”It has all been a hideous mistake!”

Abruptly, defiantly Beatrix threw out the words at Thayer, as he entered. Then her head dropped on her arms which rested on the table before her.

Breathless from his struggle with the storm and astounded at her greeting, Thayer halted just across the threshold and looked at her in silence. The silence grew irksome to her. She changed the form of her words.

”I couldn't help it. I have tried.” The defiance in her voice suddenly gave place to desperation. She pushed back her chair, rose and crossed the room to the fire. There she turned and stood facing Thayer, her head erect, her cheeks scarlet, her hands, palms downward, tightly clasped.

”I have tried my best and failed. It is a total, absolute failure,” she went on fiercely. ”I know it, and you know it, too. You have watched it coming on, growing and overpowering me. We may as well admit it; I made a mistake when I married Sidney Lorimer.”

Thayer met her eyes steadily, rallying all his forces to face her in this new mood. This sudden change in her baffled his powers of comprehension. Weakened and torn and shaken by her endless hours alone in the whistling, roaring storm, listening moment by moment to the hideous noises of delirium coming from the next room, the level nerves of Beatrix had at last given way completely. The noises had stopped now, and an ominous stillness lay over the room; but in Beatrix's ears they still were ringing, beating a terrible accompaniment to the crowding measures of her thoughts. Hour after hour as she had sat alone, her fingers in her ears, her eyes fixed on the snow-draped landscape outside the window, her mind had worked ceaselessly, arbitrarily. For the time being, she had felt herself unable to control the direction of her thoughts, and the direction had been fraught with danger.

She went back to her first meeting with Lorimer. She went over each detail of their friends.h.i.+p and of their married life. She tried in vain to connect the genial, fascinating man she had first known with the man whose ravings found their way under her fingers pressed against her ears. She recalled his old-time devotion and chivalry; she contrasted it with his moodiness and the brutal petulance which of late had marked his manner to her. At no one point had there been a sudden change in him. The transition had been slow, insidious. At last she had wakened to it in all its bald reality.

Now and then she rose and went to the window in the hope of seeing Thayer's familiar figure coming towards her through the storm. Each time she did so, her thoughts lingered a little upon him, upon his power to hold Lorimer, upon his constant thoughtfulness for her. Each time she thought of him, her mind rested there longer, until she found herself going over their acquaintance much as, a few hours earlier, she had gone over her life with Lorimer. Then, all at once, she dropped her head on the table with a little moan. Her will was powerless longer to blind her to the truth. Her loyalty to Lorimer, her traditions, her training had made her fight for months, a fight no less bitter because it was subconscious. Now her fighting strength was gone. The truth had a.s.serted itself at the instant when her nervous force was at its weakest. It had a.s.serted itself, and it had mastered her.

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