The King of Arcadia Part 22

"I am glad you like him," he said; his tone implying the precise opposite of the words.

"Are you? You don't say it very enthusiastically."

It was a small challenge, and he lifted it almost roughly.

"I can't be enthusiastic where your liking for other men is concerned."

Her smile was a mere face-lighting of mockery.

"I can't imagine Mr. Bromley saying a thing like that. What was it you told me once about the high plane of men-friends.h.i.+ps? As I remember it, you said that they were the purest pa.s.sions the world has ever known.

And you wouldn't admit that women could breathe the rarefied air of that high alt.i.tude at all."

"That was before I knew all the possibilities; before I knew what it means to----"

"Don't say it," she interrupted, the mocking mood slipping from her like a cast-off garment.

"I shall say it," he went on doggedly. "Loudon is nearer to me than any other man I ever knew. But I honestly believe I should hate him if--tell me that it isn't so, Elsa. For heaven's sake, help me to kill out this new madness before it makes a scoundrel of me!"

What she would have said he was not to know. Beyond the zone of light bounded by the shadows of the maples on the lawn there were sounds as of some animal cras.h.i.+ng its way through the shrubbery. A moment later, out of the enclosing walls of the night, came a man, running and gasping for breath. It was one of the labourers from the camp at Elbow Canyon, and he made for the corner of the portico where Miss Craigmiles's hammock was swung.

"'Tis Misther Ballard I'm lukin' for!" he panted; and Ballard answered quickly for himself.

"I'm here," he said. "What's wanted?"

"It's Misther Bromley, this time, sorr. The wather was risin' in the river, and he'd been up to the wing dam just below this to see was there anny logs or annything cloggin' it. On the way up or back, we don't know which, he did be stoomblin' from the trail into the canyon; and the dago, Lu'gi, found him." The man was mopping his face with a red bandana, and his hands were shaking as if he had an ague fit.

"Is he badly hurt?" Ballard had put himself quickly between the hammock and the bearer of ill tidings.

"'Tis kilt dead entirely he is, sorr, we're thinkin'," was the low-spoken reply. The a.s.sistant engineer had no enemies among the workmen at the headquarters' camp.

Ballard heard a horrified gasp behind him, and the hammock suddenly swung empty. When he turned, Elsa was hurrying out through the open French window with his coat and hat.

"You must not lose a moment," she urged. "Don't wait for anything--I'll explain to father and Aunt June. Hurry! hurry! but, oh, do be careful--_careful_!"

Ballard dropped from the edge of the portico and plunged into the shrubbery at the heels of the messenger. The young woman, still pale and strangely perturbed, hastened to find her aunt.

"What is it, child? What has happened?"

Miss Cauffrey, the gentle-voiced, had been dozing in her chair, but she wakened quickly when Elsa spoke to her.

"It is another--accident; at the construction camp. Mr. Ballard had to go immediately. Where is father?"

Miss Cauffrey put up her eye-gla.s.ses and scanned the various groups within eye-reach. Then she remembered. "Oh, yes; I think I must be very sleepy, yet. He went in quite a little time ago; to the library to lie down. He asked me to call him when Mr. Ballard was ready to go."

"Are you sure of that, Aunt June?"

"Why--yes. No, that wasn't it, either; he asked me to excuse him to Mr.

Ballard. I recollect now. Dear me, child! What has upset you so? You look positively haggard."

But Elsa had fled; first to the library, which was empty, and then to her father's room above stairs. That was empty, too, but the coat and waistcoat her father had worn earlier in the evening were lying upon the bed as if thrown aside hurriedly. While she was staring panic-stricken at the mute evidences of his absence she heard his step in the corridor.

When he came in, less familiar eyes than those of his daughter would scarcely have recognised him. He was m.u.f.fled to the heels in a long rain-coat, the muscles of his face were twitching, and he was breathing hard like a spent runner.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The muscles of his face were twitching, and he was breathing hard, like a spent runner.]

"Father!" she called, softly; but he either did not hear or did not heed. He had flung the rain-coat aside and was hastily struggling into the evening dress. When he turned from the dressing-mirror she could hardly keep from crying out. With the swift change of raiment he had become himself again; and a few minutes later, when she had followed him to the library to find him lying quietly upon the reading-lounge, half-asleep, as it seemed, the transformation scene in the upper room became more than ever like the fleeting impression of an incredible dream.

"Father, are you asleep?" she asked; and when he sat up quickly she told him her tidings without preface.

"Mr. Bromley is hurt--fatally, they think--by a fall from the path into the lower canyon. Mr. Ballard has gone with the man who came to bring the news. Will you send Otto in the car to see if there is anything we can do?"

"Bromley? Oh, no, child; it can't be _Bromley_!" He had risen to his feet at her mention of the name, but now he sat down again as if the full tale of the years had smitten him suddenly. Then he gave his directions, brokenly, and with a curious thickening of the deep-toned, mellifluous voice: "Tell Otto to bring the small car around at--at once, and fetch me my coat. Of cou'se, my deah, I shall go myself"--this in response to her swift protest. "I'm quite well and able; just a little--a little sho'tness of breath. Fetch me my coat and the doctor-box, thah's a good girl. But--but I a.s.sure you it can't be--Bromley!"

XVI

THE RETURN OF THE OMEN

Loudon Bromley's princ.i.p.al wounding was a pretty seriously broken head, got, so said Luigi, the Tuscan river-watchman who had found and brought him in, by the fall from the steep hill path into the rocky canyon.

Ballard reached the camp at the heels of the Irish newsbearer shortly after the unconscious a.s.sistant had been carried up to the adobe headquarters; and being, like most engineers with field experience, a rough-and-ready amateur surgeon, he cleared the room of the throng of sympathising and utterly useless stone "buckies," and fell to work. But beyond cleansing the wound and telegraphing by way of Denver to Aspen for skilled help, there was little he could do.

The telegraphing promised nothing. Cutting out all the probable delays, and a.s.suming the Aspen physician's willingness to undertake a perilous night gallop over a barely pa.s.sable mountain trail, twelve hours at the very shortest must go to the covering of the forty miles.

Ballard counted the slow beats of the fluttering pulse and shook his head despairingly. Since he had lived thus long after the accident, Bromley might live a few hours longer. But it seemed much more likely that the flickering candle of life might go out with the next breath.

Ballard was unashamed when the lights in the little bunk-room grew dim to his sight, and a lump came in his throat. Jealousy, if the sullen self-centring in the sentimental affair had grown to that, was quenched in the upwelling tide of honest grief. For back of the s.e.x-selfishness, and far more deeply rooted, was the strong pa.s.sion of brother-loyalty, reawakened now and eager to make amends--to be given a chance to make amends--for the momentary lapse into egoism.

To the Kentuckian in this hour of keen misery came an angel of comfort in the guise of his late host, the master of Castle 'Cadia. There was the stuttering staccato of a motor-car breasting the steep grade of the mesa hill, the drumming of the released engines at the door of the adobe, and the colonel entered, followed by Jerry Blacklock, who had taken the chauffeur's place behind the pilot wheel for the roundabout drive from Castle 'Cadia. In professional silence, and with no more than a nod to the watcher at the bedside, the first gentleman of Arcadia laid off his coat, opened a kit of surgeon's tools, and proceeded to save Bromley's life, for the time being, at least, by skilfully lifting the broken bone which was slowly pressing him to death.

"Thah, suh," he said, the melodious voice filling the tin-roofed shack until every resonant thing within the mud-brick walls seemed to vibrate in harmonious sympathy, "thah, suh; what mo' there is to do needn't be done to-night. To-morrow morning, Mistuh Ballard, you'll make a right comfo'table litter and have him carried up to Castle 'Cadia, and among us all we'll try to ansuh for him. Not a word, my deah suh; it's only what that deah boy would do for the most wo'thless one of us. I tell you, Mistuh Ballard, we've learned to think right much of Loudon; yes, suh--right much."

Ballard was thankful, and he said so. Then he spoke of the Aspen-aimed telegram.

"Countehmand it, suh; countehmand it," was the colonel's direction.

"We'll pull him through without calling in the neighbuhs. Living heah, in such--ah--close proximity to youh man-mangling inst.i.tutions, I've had experience enough durin' the past year or so to give me standing as a regular pract.i.tioneh; I have, for a fact, suh." And his mellow laugh was like the booming of bees among the clover heads.

"I don't doubt it in the least," acknowledged Ballard; and then he thanked young Blacklock for coming.

"It was up to me, wasn't it, Colonel Craigmiles?" said the collegian.

"Otto--Otto's the house-shover, you know--flunked his job; said he wouldn't be responsible for anybody's life if he had to drive that road at speed in the night. We drove it all right, though, didn't we, Colonel? And we'll drive it back."

The King of Arcadia put a hand on Ballard's shoulder and pointed an appreciative finger at Blacklock.

"That young cub, suh, hasn't any mo' horse sense than one of youh Dago mortah-mixers; but the way he drives a motor-car is simply scandalous!

Why, suh, if my hair hadn't been white when we started, it would have tu'ned on me long befo' we made the loop around Dump Mountain."

Ballard went to the door with the two Good Samaritans, saw the colonel safely settled in the runabout, and let his gaze follow the winding course of the little car until the dodging tail-light had crossed the temporary bridge below the camp, to be lost among the shoulders of the opposite hills. The elder Fitzpatrick was at his elbow when he turned to go in.