Garrison's Finish Part 17

He obeyed automatically, not striving to fathom the great charity of her silence. And then he told all--all. Even as he had told that very good trainer and righteous friend, Dan Crimmins. His voice was perfectly lifeless. And the girl listened, lips clenched on teeth.

"And--and that's all," he whispered. "G.o.d knows it's enough--too much."

He drew himself away as some unclean thing.

"All that, all that, and you only a boy," whispered the girl, half to herself. "You must not tell the major. You must not," she cried fiercely.

"I must," he whispered. "I will."

"You must not. You won't. You must go away, go away. Wipe the slate clean," she added tensely. "You must not tell the major. It must be broken to him gently, by degrees. Boy, boy, don't you know what it is to love; to have your heart twisted, broken, trampled? You must not tell him. It would kill. I--know." She crushed her hands in her lap.

"I'm a coward if I run," he said.

"A murderer if you stay," she answered. "And Mr. Waterbury--he will flay you--keep you in the mire. I know. No, you must go, you must go. Must have a chance for regeneration."

"You are very kind--very kind. You do not say you loathe me." He arose abruptly, clenching his hands above his head in silent agony.

"No, I do not," she whispered, leaning forward, hands gripping the log, eyes burning up into his face. "I do not. Because I can't. I can't.

Because I love you, love you, love you. Boy, boy, can't you see? Won't you see? I love you--"

"Don't," he cried sharply, as if in physical agony. "You don't know what you say--"

"I do, I do. I love you, love you," she stormed. Pa.s.sion, long stamped down, had arisen in all its might. The surging intensity of her nature was at white heat. It had broken all bonds, swept everything aside in its mad rush. "Take me with you. Take me with you--anywhere," she panted pa.s.sionately. She arose and caught him swiftly by the arm, forcing up her flaming face to his. "I don't care what you are--I know what you will be. I've loved you from the first. I lied when I ever said I hated you. I'll help you to make a new start. Oh, so hard! Try me. Try me.

Take me with you. You are all I have. I can't give you up. I won't! Take me, take me. Do, do, do!" Her head thrown back, she forced a hungry arm about his neck and strove to drag his lips to hers.

He caught both wrists and eyed her. She was panting, but her eyes met his unwaveringly, gloriously unashamed. He fought for every word.

"Don't--tempt--me--Sue. Good G.o.d, girl! you don't know how I love you.

You can't. Loved you from that night in the train. Now I know who you were, what you are to me--everything. Help me to think of you, not of myself. You must guard yourself. I'm tired of fighting--I can't----"

"It's the girl up North?"

He drew back. He had forgotten. He turned away, head bowed. Both were fighting--fighting against love--everything. Then Sue drew a great breath and commenced to s.h.i.+ver.

"I was wrong. You must go to her," she whispered. "She has the right of way. She has the right of way. Go, go," she blazed, pa.s.sion slipping up again. "Go before I forget honor; forget everything but that I love."

Garrison turned. She never forgot the look his face held; never forgot the tone of his voice.

"I go. Good-by, Sue. I go to the girl up North. You are above me in every way--infinitely above me. Yes, the girl up North. I had forgotten.

She is my wife. And I have children."

He swung on his heel and blindly flung himself upon the waiting gelding.

Sue stood motionless.

CHAPTER XII.

GARRISON HIMSELF AGAIN.

That night Garrison left for New York; left with the memory of Sue standing there on the moonlit pike, that look in her eyes; that look of dazed horror which he strove blindly to shut out. He did not return to Calvert House; not because he remembered the girl's advice and was acting upon it. His mind had no room for the past. Every blood-vessel was striving to grapple with the present. He was numb with agony. It seemed as if his brain had been beaten with sticks; beaten to a pulp.

That last scene with Sue had uprooted every fiber of his being. He writhed when he thought of it. But one thought possessed him. To get away, get away, get away; out of it all; anyhow, anywhere.

He was like a raw recruit who has been lying on the firing-line, suffering the agonies of apprehension, of imagination; experiencing the proximity of death in cold blood, without the heat of action to render him oblivious.

Garrison had been on the firing-line for so long that his nerve was frayed to ribbons. Now the blow had fallen at last. The exposure had come, and a fierce frenzy possessed him to complete the work begun.

He craved physical combat. And when he thought of Sue he felt like a murderer fleeing from the scene of his crime; striving, with distance, to blot out the memory of his victim. That was all he thought of. That, and to get away--to flee from himself. Afterward, a.n.a.lysis of actions would come. At present, only action; only action.

It was five miles to the Cottonton depot, reached by a road that branched off from the Logan Pike about half a mile above the spot where Waterbury had been thrown. He remembered that there was a through train at ten-fifteen. He would have time if he rode hard. With head bowed, shoulders hunched, he bent over the gelding. He had no recollection of that ride.

But the long, weary journey North was one he had full recollection of.

He was forced to remain partially inactive, though he paced from smoking to observation-car time and time again. He could not remain still. The first great fury of the storm had pa.s.sed. It had swept him up, weak and nerveless, on the beach of retrospect; among the wreck of past hopes; the flotsam and jetsam of what might have been.

He had time for self-a.n.a.lysis, for remorse, for the fierce probings of conscience. One minute he regretted that he had run away without confessing to the major; the next, remembering Sue's advice, he was glad. He tried to shut out the girl's picture from his heart.

Impossible. She was the picture; all else was but frame. He knew that he had lost her irrevocably. What must she think of him? How she must utterly despise him!

On the second day doubt came to Garrison, and with it a ray of hope. For the first time the possibility suggested itself that Dan Crimmins, from the deep well of his lively imagination, might have concocted Mrs.

Garrison and offspring. Crimmins had said he had always hated him. And he had acted like a villain. He looked like one; like a felon, but newly jail-freed. Might he not have invented the statement through sheer ill will? Realizing that Garrison's memory was a blank, might he not have sought to rivet the blackmailing fetters upon him by this new bolt?

Thus Garrison reasoned, and outlined two schemes. First, he would find his wife if wife there were. He could not love her, for love must have a beginning, and it feeds on the past. He had neither. But he would be loyal to her; loyal as Crimmins said she had been loyal to him. Then he would face whatever charges were against him, and seek restoration from the jockey club, though it took his lifetime. And he would seek some way of wiping out, or at least diminis.h.i.+ng, the stain he had left behind him in Virginia.

On the other hand, if Crimmins had lied--Garrison's jaw came out and his eyes snapped. Then he would sc.r.a.pe himself morally clean, and fight and fight for honorable recognition from the world. He would prove that a "has-been" can come back. He would brand the negative as a lie. And then--Sue. Perhaps--perhaps.

Those were the two roads. Which would he traverse? Whichever it was, though his heart, his entire being, lay with the latter, he would follow the pointing finger of honor; follow it to the end, no matter what it might cost, or where it might lead. Love had restored to him the appreciation of man's birthright; the birthright without which nothing is won in this world or the next. He had gained self-respect. At present it was but the thought. He would fight to make it reality; fight to keep it.

And that night as the train was leaping out of the darkness toward the lights of the great city, racing toward its haven, rus.h.i.+ng like a falling comet, some one blundered. The world called it a disaster; the official statement, an accident, an open switch; the press called it an outrage. Pessimism called it fate--stern mother of the unsavory.

Optimism called it Providence. At all events, the train jammed shut like a closing telescope. Undiluted Hades was very prevalent for over an hour. There were groans, screams, prayers--all the jargon of those about to precipitately return from whence they came. It was not a pleasant scene. Ghouls were there. But mercy, charity, and great courage were also there. And Garrison was there.

Fate, the unsavory, had been with him. He had been thrown clear at the first crash; thrown through his sleeping-berth window. Physically he was not very presentable. But he fought a good fight against the flames and the general chaos.

One of the forward cars was a caldron of flame. A baby's cry swung out from among the roar and smart of the living h.e.l.l. There was a frantic father and a demented mother. Both had to be thrown and pounded into submission; held by sheer weight and muscle.

There were brave men there that night, but there was no sense in giving two lives for one. Death was reaping more than enough. They would try to save the "kid," but it looked hopeless. Was it a girl? Yes, and an only child? She must be pinned under a seat. The fire would be about opening up on her. Sure--sure they would see what could be done. Anyway, the roof was due to smash down. But they'd see. But there were lots of others who needed a hand; others who were not pinned under seats with the flames hungry for them.

But Garrison had swung on to a near-by horse-cart, jammed into rubber boots, coats, and helmet, tying a wet towel over nose and mouth. And as some stared, some cursed, and some cheered feebly, he smashed his way through the smother of flame to the choking screams of the child.

The roof fell in. A great crash and a spouting fire of flame. An eternity, and then he emerged like one of the three prophets from the fiery furnace. Only he was not a Shadrach, Meshach, or Abednego. He was not fas.h.i.+oned from providential asbestos. He was vulnerable. They carried him to a near-by house. His head had been wonderfully smashed by the falling roof. His eyebrows and hair were left behind in the smother of flame. He was fire-licked from toe to heel. He was raving. But the child was safe. And that wreck and that rescue went down in history.

For weeks Garrison was in the hospital. It was very like the rehearsal of a past performance. He was completely out of his head. It was all very like the months he put in at Bellevue in the long ago, before he had experienced the hunger-cancer and compromised with honesty.

And again there came nights when doctors shook their heads and nurses looked grave; nights when it was understood that before another dawn had come creeping through the windows little Billy Garrison would have crossed the Big Divide; nights when the s.h.i.+bboleths of a dead-and-gone life were even fluttering on his lips; nights when names but not ident.i.ties fought with one another for existence; fought for birth, for supremacy, and "Sue" always won; nights when he sat up in bed as he had sat up in Bellevue long ago, and with tense hands and blazing eyes fought out victory on the stretch. Horrible, horrible nights; surcharged with the frenzy and unreality of a nightmare.

And one of his audience who seldom left the narrow cot was a man who had come to look for a friend among the wreck victims; come and found him not. He had chanced to pa.s.s Garrison's cot. And he had remained.

Came a night at last when stamina and hope and grit won the long, long fight. The crisis was turned. The demons, defeated, who had been fighting among themselves for the possession of Garrison's mind, reluctantly gave it back to him. And, moreover, they gave it back--intact. The part they had stolen that night in the Hoffman House was replaced.

This restoration the doctors subsequently called by a very learned and mysterious name. They gave an esoteric explanation redounding greatly to the credit of the general medical and surgical world. It was something to the effect that the initial blow Garrison had received had forced a piece of bone against the brain in such a manner as to defy mere man's surgery. This had caused the lapse of memory.

Then had come the second blow that night of the wreck. Where man had failed, nature had stepped in and operated successfully. Her methods had been crude, but effective. The unscientific blow on the head had restored the dislodged bone to its proper place. The medical world was highly pleased over this manifestation of nature's surgical skill, and appeared to think that she had operated under its direction. And nature never denied it.