The Quickening Part 46

As he leaped over into the highway, a man carrying a squirrel gun stepped from behind a tree.

"I was allowin' you'd done forgot," said the man, yawning sleepily.

"I never forget," was the short rejoinder. Then: "Come with me, and you shall hear with your own ears, since you won't take my word for it.

Then, if you still want to sleep on your wrongs, it's your own affair."

x.x.xII

WHOSO DIGGETH A PIT

If Thomas Gordon, opening his eyes to consciousness on the mid-week morning, felt the surprise which might naturally grow out of the sight of Ardea sitting in a low rocker at his bedside, he did not evince it, possibly because there were other and more perplexing things for the tired brain to grapple with first.

For the moment he did not stir or try to speak. There was a long dream somewhere in the past in which he had been lost in the darkness, stumbling and groping and calling for her to come and lead him out to life and light. It must have been a dream, he argued, and perhaps this was only a continuation of it. Yet, no; she was there in visible presence, bending over a tiny embroidery frame; and they were alone together.

"Ardea!" he said tremulously.

She looked up, and her eyes were like cooling well-springs to quench the fever fires in his.

"You are better," she said, rising. "I'll go and call your mother."

"Wait a minute," he pleaded; then his hand found the bandage on his head. "What happened to me?"

"Don't you remember? Two men tried to rob you last Sat.u.r.day evening as you were coming home. One of them struck you."

"Sat.u.r.day? And this is--"

"This is Wednesday."

The cool preciseness of her replies cut him to the heart. He did not need to ask why she had come. It was mere neighborliness, and not for him, but for his mother. He remembered the Sat.u.r.day evening quite clearly now: j.a.pheth's shout; the two men springing on him; the instant just preceding the crash of the blow when he had recognized one of his a.s.sailants and guessed the ident.i.ty of the other.

"It was no more than right that you should come," he said bitterly. "It was the least you could do, since your--"

She was moving toward the door, and his ungrateful outburst had the effect of stopping her. But she did not go back to him.

"I owe your mother anything she likes to ask," she affirmed, in the same colorless tone.

"And you owe me nothing at all, you would say. I might controvert that.

But no matter; we have pa.s.sed the Sat.u.r.day and have come to the Wednesday. Where is Norman? Hasn't he been here?"

"He has been with you almost constantly from the first. He was here less than an hour ago."

"Where is he now?"

She hesitated. "There is urgency of some kind in your business affairs.

Your father spent the night in South Tredegar; and a little while ago he telephoned for Mr. Norman--from the iron-works, I think." She had moved away again, and her hand was on the door-k.n.o.b.

He raised himself on one elbow.

"You are in a desperate hurry, aren't you?" he gritted; though the teeth-grinding was from the pain it cost him to move. "Would you mind handing me that desk telephone before you go?"

She came back and tried it, but the wired cord was not long enough to reach to the bed.

"If you wish to speak to some one, perhaps I could do it for you," she suggested, quite in the trained-nurse tone.

His smile was a mere grimace of torture.

"If you could stretch your good-will to--to my mother--that far," he said. "Please call my office--number five-twenty-six G--and ask for Mr.

Norman."

She complied, but with only a strange young-woman stenographer at the other end of the wire, a word of explanation was necessary. "This is Miss Dabney, at Woodlawn. Mr. Gordon is better, and he wishes to say--what did you want to say?" she asked, turning to him.

"Just ask what's going on; if it's Norman you've got, he'll know," said Tom, sinking back on the pillows.

What the stenographer had to say took some little time, and Ardea's color came and went in hot flashes and her eyes grew large and thoughtful as she listened. When she put the ear-piece down and spoke to the sick man, her tone was kinder.

"There is an important business meeting going on over at the furnace office, and Mr. Norman is there with your father," she said. "The stenographer wants me to ask you about some papers Mr. Norman thinks you may have, and--"

She stopped in deference to the yellow pallor that was creeping like a curious mask over the face of the man in the bed. Through all the strain of the last twenty hours she had held herself well in hand, doing for him only what she might have done for a sick and suffering stranger. But there were limits beyond which love refused to be driven.

"Tom!" she gasped, rising quickly to go to him.

"Wait," he muttered; "let me pull myself together. The papers--are--in--"

He seemed about to relapse into unconsciousness, and she hastily poured out a spoonful of the stimulating medicine left by Doctor Williams and gave it to him. It strangled him, and she slipped her hand under the pillow and raised his head. It was the nearness of her that revived him.

"I--I'm weaker than a girl," he whispered. "Vince--I mean the thug, hit me a lot harder than he needed to. What was I saying?--oh, yes; the papers. Will you--will you go over there in the corner by the door and look behind the mopboard? You will find a piece of it sawed so it will come out. In the wall behind it there ought to be a package."

She found it readily,--a thick packet securely tied with heavy twine and a little charred at the corners.

"That's it," he said weakly. "Now one more last favor; please send Aunt 'Phrony up as you go down. Tell her I want my clothes."

Miss Dabney became the trained nurse again in the turning of a leaf.

"You are not going to get up?" she said.

"Yes, I must; I'm due this minute at that meeting down yonder."

"Indeed, you shall do no such insane thing!" she cried. "What are you thinking of!"

"Listen!" he commanded. "My father has worked hard all his life, and he's right old now, Ardea. If I should fail him--but I'm not going to.

Please send Aunt 'Phrony."

"I'm going to call your mother," she said firmly.

"If you do, you'll regret it the longest day you live."