A Chariot of Fire Part 3

She was naturally a worrier in a sweet-natured way, but he had always been patient with her little weakness; some men are, with anxious women.

"No," he smiled, but rather feebly; "you've missed it again. The boy is saved. St. Clair's got hold of him. I'll talk presently, Mary--not just now."

In fact, he would say no more till he had bathed and taken food. He looked so exhausted that she brought his breakfast to his bed, serving it with her own hands, and asking no questions at all; for, although she worried, she was wise. She sent for the baby, too--a big baby, three years old--and Chester enfolded the chin of the child in his slender brown hand silently.

Then he said: "Lock the door, Mary. I've something to tell you."

When she had drawn the bra.s.s bolt and returned, somewhat pale herself with wonder and alarm, to the side of the bed, her husband spoke abruptly:

"Mary, you've got to know it--may as well have it over. I found this pinned on the stable wall. It was the Aurora that ran over the--that--that poor little fellow."

His hand shook as he laid the piece of paper in her own. And while she read it he covered his face; for he was greatly over-worn, and the strain which he had undergone seemed now to have leaped again with the spring of a creature that one supposes one has left lifeless behind.

Mrs. Chester read the writing and laid it down. It ran like this:

MR. CHESTER:

Sir,--Ime goin away while I can. It was me run over that boy while you was in town. I took Her out for a spin. I let Her out some racin with another one in the Willows an he got under Her someways. I see it in the papers so I was afraid of manslorter. Ime awful cut up about it so Ime goin to lite out while I can.

Your obedient servant, THOMAS.

The eyes of the husband and wife met silently. She was the first to speak.

"Do they know?"

Chester shook his head.

"You'll tell them, of course?"

"I haven't made up my mind."

The baby was jabbering loudly on the bed--he was very noisy; it was not easy for her to hear what was said.

"I'm sure you ought to tell them!" she cried, pa.s.sionately.

"Perhaps so. But I'd like to think it over."

A subtle terror slid over her face. "What can they do to you? I don't know about such things. Is there any--law?"

"Laws enough--laws in plenty. But I'm not answerable for the crimes of my chauffeur. It's only a question of damages."

The wife of the rich man drew a long breath. "Oh, if it's nothing but _money_!"

"Not that it would make any difference if they _could_ touch me," he continued, with a proud motion of his tired head. "It's purely a question of feeling--it's a question of right within a right, Mary.

It's to do what is really kind by these people-- Why, Mary, if you could have seen it! From beginning to end it was the most beautiful, the most wonderful thing. Nothing of the kind ever happened to me before. Mary, if an angel from the throne of G.o.d had done it--they couldn't have felt--they couldn't have treated me--it was enough to make a fellow a better man the rest of his days. Why, it was worth _living_ for, I tell you! ... And now to let them know..."

Hurlburt Chester was very tired, as we say. He choked, and hid his pale face in his pillow. And his wife laid hers beside it and cried--as women do--without pretending that she didn't. But the baby laughed aloud. And then there drove through the father's mind the repeated phrase which followed the race of the "Roarer" all the way from Beverly to Annisquam:

"What if it were Bert?"

Chester's head whirled yet from the fatigue and jar of the trip, and the words seemed to take leaps through his brain as the car leaped when she was at the top of her great speed. So he kissed the child, and dashed a drop from his cheek quite openly--since only Mary saw.

A constraint unusual to their candid relations breathed like a fog between the husband and the wife; indeed, it did not lift altogether as the autumn opened and closed.

Chester's visits to Annisquam (in which she once or twice accompanied him) were many and merciful; and the distinguished surgeon took the responsibility of the case till the boy was quite convalescent. The lad recovered slowly, but St. Clair promised that the cure would be complete.

The touching grat.i.tude of Jacob Dryver amounted to an idealization such as the comfortable, undramatic life of Chester had never experienced.

He seemed to swim in it as an imaginative person dreams of swimming in the air, tree-high above the heads of the crowd on the earth. The situation had become to him a fine intoxicant--but it had its reactions, as intoxicants must.

September and October burned to ashes upon the North Sh.o.r.e. Fire of maple, flash of sumac, torch of elder, flare of ivy, faded into brown November, and the breakers off the Beverly coast took on the greens and blues of north-wind weather below the line of silver surf.

The Chesters closed "their own hired house" and moved to town. The Aurora remained in her stable, nor had she left it since the morning when she came wearily back from Annisquam.

His wife had noticed, but had not seemed to notice, that Chester rode no more that fall. She noted too, but did not seem to note, that he continued his visits to the injured lad after they had returned to the city.

On all the great holidays he made a point of going down--Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New-Year's Day. Mrs. Chester had wished to duplicate for the quarryman's boy the Christmas gifts of her own child (such had been her pretty fancy), but Batty was quite a lad--ten years old; and Bert, like a spoiled collie, was yet a baby, and likely to remain so for some time to come. So the mother contented herself, perforce, with less intimate remembrances. Once, when she had packed a box of miracles--toys and books, clothes and candy--she thrust it from her with a cry: "They would never touch these--if they knew! Hurlburt!

Hurlburt! don't you think they ought to know?"

"Do what you think best, Mary," he said, wearily. "I have never been able to decide that question. But you are free to do so if you prefer."

He regarded her with an expression that went to her heart. She flung herself into his arms and tried to kiss it away.

Now, Mary Chester, as we have said, was a worrier, and the worrier never lets a subject go. As the winter set in, her mind closed about the matter which had troubled her, and it began to become unbearable, like a foreign substance in the flesh.

On a January afternoon--it was one of those dark days when souls cloud over--she flung on her furs, and leaving a pencilled line to her husband saying what she had done, she took the train to Gloucester, and a dreary electric-car to Annisquam.

The flowers in the front yard were knee-deep in snow, and Batty sat in the window busy with a Sorrento wood-saw of her providing. He laughed outright when he saw her, and his mother flung open the door as if she had flung open her heart.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE FLOWERS IN THE FRONT YARD WERE KNEE-DEEP IN SNOW]

"Land!" she cried. "In all this snow!"

She finished tying a fresh white ap.r.o.n over her polka-dotted blue wrapper, and joyously led the lady in.

Batty was a freckled little fellow, with red hair like his father's; he had the pretty imperiousness of a sick and only child who has by all the sorceries contrived to escape petulance. When he had greeted the visitor, he ran back to his jig-saw. He was carving camwood, which stained his fingers crimson.

"I want to see you--alone," began Mrs. Chester, nervously. It had been one of Chester's pleasures to warm the entire house for the convalescent lad, and big coal fires were purring in Batty's bedroom and in the ten-foot "parlor," whither his mother conducted her guest.

The doors were left open. The scent of the camwood came across, pungent and sickening. The fret of the jig-saw went on steadily.

"He's makin' a paper-cutter--for Mr. Chester," observed Batty's mother.

"He made a watch-case last week--for Mr. Chester."

Mary Chester paled, and she plunged at once:

"There's something I've come to tell--I've _got_ to tell you. We can't keep it to ourselves any longer. I have come to tell you how it happened--that Batty-- We thought you'd rather not know--"