The Long Lane's Turning Part 31

As he neared his house speeding urchins were crying newspaper extras, and more than once he heard his name in the shouted, dislocated phrases. His speech! The swan's-song of Harry Sevier!

He let himself into his apartment with his latch-key and wearily switched on the lights. He suddenly remembered that he had eaten nothing since noon and realised that he was wretchedly tired and spent.

A pencilled note, with the superscription in Brent's jerky hand, lay on the table. He took it up and opened it.

Then suddenly he gave an inarticulate cry of amaze--of actual fright.

He was staring at this message, written an hour before:

_Anti-liquor plank adopted. You were nominated for Governor on the first ballot at eight o'clock._

CHAPTER x.x.xIX

THE JAILBIRD

To every man come portentous moments of decision so packed with fate that all that his after life may hold of pain or joy, seen with the clearer view of later knowledge, may well have hung upon the issue.

Harry's one greatest moment of crisis had been when he stood in the doorway of Cameron Craig's house, with that midnight alarm pulsing about him--when he had chosen the course that meant safety for Echo at such bitter cost to himself. The moment when he confronted the blunt fact of his nomination was wellnigh as significant.

Such a possibility had never occurred to him. He saw himself now, first with bewilderment, then with pa.s.sionate resentment, in a predicament as unprecedented as it was unescapable. He had not even had the option of declining the nomination. By now his name, as the new party's choice, was darting over the clicking wires to the remotest borders of the country. How could he accept it? He, who might at any hour, for all he knew, be faced with a charge from which (if, indeed, flight still lay open) he must flee ignominiously, like a thief in the night--which, in the eyes of the law, he was! Yet how evade the thing thus thrust upon him? After his speech, in which he had championed the new cause so ardently, could he throw ridicule upon the organisation, make its leaders--men whom he had known and respected all his life--laughing-stocks, throw doubt upon his own intentions, and make his action of to-day show forth before all as a flamboyant bid for popular applause, the gallery-appeal of a pitiful _flaneur_ and att.i.tudinarian, who had no mind to link himself with an inevitable defeat at the polls?

As Harry stood in the pleasant, lighted room, with Brent's pencilled note in his hand, a strange thought obtruded itself to grow slowly over his confused imaginings. Behind it all was there not the same wise Intention whose outlines he had thought he distinguished in his bitter prison experience? And was he, in faithless presumption, to deny that over-rule, and vanish cavalierly into some sluggish back-current of life? The same fate that had turned Paddy the Brick's pellet of lead the single hair's-breadth that had saved him, perhaps, from the scaffold, had rendered his enemy, at least for the present, incapable of harming him. And this part of his problem belonged to the present.

Why had the cards so fallen, unless in that intricate Plan, it was meant that he should now give his hand to this work? He had trusted fate far--might he not trust it further? Though the party that had called him to carry its standard into the fight was destined to failure, it was working for the future, and some other campaign--long after the worst that could befall had come to him--would bring its principles success. He would have done his part!

So, for good or ill to himself, Harry made his momentous decision, and as if it had been a signal, at the same instant there came the quick, insistent ringing of the telephone on his desk.

The next few days were days of ungrudging labour on Harry's part of conferences with the state leaders--for Brent's prophecy had been fulfilled and Good-Government Clubs throughout the state had placed their local machinery in the new party's control. These earlier meetings were, for the most part, in Harry's own apartment, or in the library of Midfields, since Judge Allen was chairman of the Committee on Organisation. On none of these latter occasions had he seen Echo, nor, to his relief, had he met her elsewhere. He gave himself no relaxation, bending all the energies of his reawakened being to the task of detail, and the mapping out of the campaign which he was entering. Whatever his apprehension and trepidation, he had learned his real weight in the hour of his great speech and the sense of power, linked with extraordinary and tangible opportunity, thrilled and dominated him.

There came an evening, however, after a day of more than usual concentration, when he felt that he must relax. He had dined at the hotel with some of the party's out-of-town lieutenants, but excused himself early and chose to dismiss his motor and to walk home afoot, craving the lightness and gaiety of the jostling streets and gleaming windows.

Presently he found himself pa.s.sing a theatre-front and remembered that Brent had pressed him to make one of a box-party there that same evening. At the time he had left the matter open, pleading the dinner engagement, but now it occurred to him suddenly that an hour of lights and music would be welcome. It was the intermission after the first act and men were flocking into the doors, chatting and laughing. The spirit of frivolity attracted him and he entered with the rest.

The orchestra was playing--a Bohemian medley of uneven harmonies and wildly plaintive alternations, strung, as on a thread, on the airily-fantastic _motif_ of Dvorak's _Humoresque_, and the pirouetting music seemed to belong to the flippant and shallow yet alluring interior, with its plenteous gold-leaf and dark blue draperies embroidered in peac.o.c.k-feathers--the breath of a life of laughter, of careless amus.e.m.e.nt, of joy in the present. Harry felt his spirits lift and lighten at the grateful slackening of tension which the _mise en scene_ created, and he bowed and smiled easily when the audience testified its recognition, as he followed the attendant along the side wall, by a hushed hand-clapping which ran across the rows of seats.

With his hand parting the rear curtains of the box, however, he halted irresolutely--its occupants were Mrs. Spottiswoode, Brent, Lawrence Treadwell and Echo. For an instant resentment stirred in him; he guessed that Brent, albeit with the best intentions in the world, had planned this meeting. Then he squared his shoulders and entered. In another moment he had greeted Mrs. Spottiswoode and was bowing over Echo's hand.

The men had risen. "Here is the Candidate!" exclaimed Brent, laughing.

"Mrs. Spottiswoode was just about to make me a wager that you wouldn't descend to such triviality."

Pretty Mrs. Spottiswoode smiled as she closed her fan. "If I had, I shouldn't begrudge the loss," she said. "You've missed the first act, Mr. Sevier, but then openings are always dull, aren't they?" Treadwell shook hands with him with frank friendliness. Politically he belonged to the party in power, but his liking for Harry was sincere and of long-standing.

The lights in the house were fading and the orchestra had swung into a soft and measured air. The rustle and chatter among the seats stilled: the curtain was rising. After the few words of greeting, Harry dropped into the vacant chair behind Echo's, in the rear of the enclosure. He had a feeling that again a satiric chance had s.n.a.t.c.hed the reins of conduct from his hands. His unseeing gaze was set upon the crowded tiers beneath, but he was conscious of nothing but that small, delicately-shaped head like one in a Greek frieze, that clear-cut profile softly tinged by the dim rose-lamps of the box, the clasped, unringed hands, the lacy sweep of the pale evening-dress silhouetted against the curtain. Beyond the range of his vision manikins came and went upon the stage, speaking meaningless words. At the other side of the box Mrs. Spottiswoode was whispering some humorous adventure to Treadwell and Brent, whose heads were bent toward her. Everything else seemed unreal and far-away, and he and Echo the only realities in a chapter of ba.n.a.lity.

He became conscious all at once that her head was turned toward him, and as though by magnetic compulsion his own eyes looked into hers.

"I want to say something to you." The words were the merest whisper on her parted lips, yet he heard. He drew his chair nearer till his bent head was at her shoulder. "Yes," he said.

Her lips trembled, but she spoke in a clear undertone, audible only to him, which faltered the merest trifle:

"I don't know whether--now--it makes any difference to you," she said.

"But I--I was not myself when I--wrote you that note, the day you--went away. There was a reason why I--acted as I did. You--"

The low voice failed. There had been in the hesitant words failing pride and shame, mingled with the love that had been so long denied--a revelation which welled from the pure, outspoken honesty of heart that compelled it, demanding, at all odds, so far as he was concerned, openness and understanding. The shaken voice, the tremulous lips, the moon-soft fire of her eyes and the faint scent of her clothing, all the sweet suggestions of her presence were crying aloud to Harry, tempting him with a vision of promise. What if she had failed him--then? What if that courage he had dreamed, put to the touch, had shown but cowardice, that love of him a secondary thing to her? She was what he wanted--to yield himself to her arms as a swimmer to the sea! As much as she loved any one--save herself--she loved him! Was not a half loaf better than no bread? The icy barrier of reserve which he had reared crumbled down, and he felt the thing he had tried to imprison leap up, savage and not to be denied. His groping hand went out and touched her arm.

"Echo!" he whispered hoa.r.s.ely. "Echo--"

His voice died in his throat. Her hands in her lap held the theatrical programme, and words in heavy black-letter--the t.i.tle of the piece--were staring up at him from the white paper--

THE JAILBIRD

In the shadow, he felt his limbs suddenly trembling. With a kind of fascination his gaze, for the first time since his entrance, lifted to the stage.

It was set as a long flagged corridor of vertical steel bars, into which doors were let at regular intervals, and behind each door showed a bare, forbidding room, furnished with two iron cots, one above the other, and two wooden stools. As he gazed in consternation, a bell clangored and along the corridor came tramping a line of men clad in dingy stripes, pallid face close to shabby shoulder, one knee rising and falling to the d.a.m.nable rhythm of the prison lock-step.

Harry felt an algid chill creep over him. He sat upright, his whole body rigid, each detail of the significant picture stamping itself upon his quivering perception. Midway of the line a turnkey unlocked a door in the barred wall and two links of the human chain detached themselves and entered--one stooped and crafty and cringing; the other clean-cut and erect with no stamp of vice upon his face. The clanging bolt shot home, the line moved off. Then, in the silence of the house the comely figure leaned against the bars, and John Stark's voice--or was it his, Harry Sevier's?--cried in broken agony:

"And I am innocent--innocent!"

As the curtain descended on the act, amid a crash of orchestral music, Mrs. Spottiswoode turned to Harry with a little shrug.

"It _is_ moving, really, isn't it? But how _terribly_ unnatural! Of course in real life nothing like that could happen to an innocent man.

What do you think, Mr. Treadwell?"

But Treadwell did not answer at once. He had turned in surprise to the rear of the box, where a youth in a grey silver-b.u.t.toned uniform had parted the curtains. The messenger was looking at Brent, who rose and went to him.

"I beg pardon, sir," the boy said in a low voice, "but they told me at the box-office you were here. Will you please come over to the club?

Something is the matter. Perhaps Mr. Sevier will come too."

Brent looked at him--there was agitation in the youthful face. He turned.

"Will you ladies excuse Sevier and me for a few minutes?" he said. "I dare say we shall be back before the curtain goes up again."

At the words Harry had risen also, with a quick relief at this summons, whatever it was, that offered the instant escape. Though his bow took in Echo, he did not look at her, as turning, he followed Brent quickly from the box.

CHAPTER XL

GENTLEMEN ALL

Chisholm Allen had come to the end of a long tether. He was drunk.

Not with the amiable jollity of the youthful tippler, nor with the heavy, fatuous oblivion of the sot, but with the drunkenness that marks the vicious rebellion of the nerve-cell against the prolonged excitation of an intoxicant--the dreadful revenge wherein the outraged brain summons the distorted imagination to fill the victim's landscape with uncouth and demoniacal visitants.

For a long fortnight, at the Springs, with a couple of cronies, he had defied convention and strained the tolerance, which had countenanced past escapades because he was an Allen, to the breaking-point. Only when revelry had sunken to deep debauch had friends been able to bring him to the city, where he had been bestowed in a room at the club to await returning soberness. That night, however, when the friendly guard had relaxed, Chilly had awakened to horrid visions. At first he had known them for creations of his drunken fantasy, but they had multiplied in numbers and horror till they had broken down the frail bulwark of remaining reason and obsessed him with the sense of reality--uncanny nightmares from some formless abysm, shuddering mistakes of nature, mingling in a monstrous extravaganza that crowded about to menace him.

With a scream Chilly burst from the room and ran along an upper corridor to the brightly-lighted reading-room. It was deserted at that hour--but not for him, for the visitants from which he fled pursued him there! They ringed him about, clutching at him. Livid and shaking, he seized a heavy iron poker from the hearth and crouching in a corner, beat off the imaginary a.s.sailants.