OLD Anthony's body had been brought home, and lay in state in his great
bed. There had been a bad hour; death seems so strangely to erase faults
and leave virtues. Something strong and vital had gone from the house,
and the servants moved about with cautious, noiseless steps. In Grace's
boudoir, Howard was sitting, his arms around his wife, telling her the
story of the day. At dawn he had notified her by telephone of Akers'
murder.
“Shall I tell Lily?” she had asked, trembling.
“Do you want to wait until I get back?”
“I don't know how she will take it, Howard. I wish you could be here,
anyhow.”
But then had come the battle and his father's death, and in the end it
was Willy Cameron who told her. He had brought back all that was mortal
of Anthony Cardew, and, having seen the melancholy procession up the
stairs, had stood in the hall, hating to intrude but hoping to be
useful. Howard found him there, a strange, disheveled figure, bearing
the scars of battle, and held out his hand.
“It's hard to thank you, Cameron,” he said; “you seem to be always
about when we need help. And”--he paused--“we seem to have needed it
considerably lately.”
Willy Cameron flushed.
“I feel rather like a meddler, sir.”
“Better go up and wash,” Howard said. “I'll go up with you.”
It happened, therefore, that it was in Howard Cardew's opulent
dressing-room that Howard first spoke to Willy Cameron of Akers' death,
pacing the floor as he did so.
“I haven't told her, Cameron.” He was anxious and puzzled. “She'll have
to be told soon, of course. I don't know anything about women. I don't
know how she'll take it.”
“She has a great deal of courage. It will be a shock, but not a grief.
But I have been thinking--” Willy Cameron hesitated. “She must not feel
any remorse,” he went on. “She must not feel that she contributed to it
in any way. If you can make that clear to her--”
“Are you sure she did not?”
“It isn't facts that matter now. We can't help those. And no one can
tell what actually led to his change of heart. It is what she is to
think the rest of her life.”
Howard nodded.
“I wish you would tell her,” he said. “I'm a blundering fool when it
comes to her. I suppose I care too much.”
He caught rather an odd look in Willy Cameron's face at that, and
pondered over it later.
“I will tell her, if you wish.”
And Howard drew a deep breath of relief. It was shortly after that he
broached another matter, rather diffidently.
“I don't know whether you realize it or not, Cameron,” he said, “but
this thing to-day might have been a different story if it had not been
for you. And--don't think I'm putting this on a reward basis. It's
nothing of the sort--but I would like to feel that you were working with
me. I'd hate like thunder to have you working against me,” he added.
“I am only trained for one thing.”
“We use chemists in the mills.”
But the discussion ended there. Both men knew that it would be taken
up later, at some more opportune time, and in the meantime both had one
thought, Lily.
So it happened that Lily heard the news of Louis Akers' death from Willy
Cameron. She stood, straight and erect, and heard him through, watching
him with eyes sunken by her night's vigil and by the strain of the day.
But it seemed to her that he was speaking of some one she had known long
ago, in some infinitely remote past.
“I am sorry,” she said, when he finished. “I didn't want him to die. You
know that, don't you? I never wished him--Willy, I say I am sorry, but I
don't really feel anything. It's dreadful.”
Before he could catch her she had fallen to the floor, fainting for the
first time in her healthy young life.
* * * * *
An hour later Mademoiselle went down to the library door. She found
Willy Cameron pacing the floor, a pipe clenched in his teeth, and a look
of wild despair in his eyes.
Mademoiselle took a long breath. She had changed her view-point somewhat
since the spring. After all, what mattered was happiness. Wealth and
worldly ambition were well enough, but they brought one, in the end,
to the thing which waited for all in some quiet upstairs room, with the
shades drawn and the heavy odors of hot-house flowers over everything.
“She is all right, quite, Mr. Cameron,” she said. “It was but a crisis
of the nerves, and to be expected. And now she demands to see you.”
Grayson, standing in the hall, had a swift vision of a tall figure,
which issued with extreme rapidity from the library door, and went up
the stairs, much like a horse taking a series of hurdles. But the figure
lost momentum suddenly at the top, hesitated, and apparently moved
forward on tiptoe. Grayson went into the library and sniffed at the
unmistakable odor of a pipe. Then, having opened a window, he went and
stood before a great portrait of old Anthony Cardew. Tears stood in
the old man's eyes, but there was a faint smile on his lips. He saw the
endless procession of life. First, love. Then, out of love, life. Then
death. Grayson was old, but he had lived to see young love in the Cardew
house. Out of love, life. He addressed a little speech to the picture.
“Wherever you are, sir,” he said, “you needn't worry any more. The line
will carry on, sir. The line will carry on.”
Upstairs in the little boudoir Willy Cameron knelt beside the couch, and
gathered Lily close in his arms.