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 assailants.
It was upon this spectacle that the agitated steward had come, called
by a frightened bell-boy, and as the theatre stood opposite, he had
hastily sent thither, as the likeliest spot in which to find some
_habitue_ of the Club who might assume charge of the situation.
Two other club-members stood nonplussed and disconcerted on the
threshold of the room when Harry Sevier and Brent entered, with the
steward behind them. In the livid face of the boy at bay, the staring
distempered eyes, the gripped, impromptu weapon, Harry read the fact.
He spoke to him soothingly, but the frenzied brain did not recognise
him. To Chilly's imagination the friendly, familiar faces took on the
baleful character of the gibbering things by which he was beset. He
sprang up, slashing frantically with the iron, panting
indistinguishable words. Thus for a moment the writhing images fell
back--only one of the iron lizards that formed the andirons suddenly
came to life and on bat's-wings soared to a great marble bust that sat
on a shelf above the fireplace, where it perched and spat down at him.
Chilly leaped up at it, dealing it blow after blow with the poker--then
laughed wildly to see it suddenly waver and topple forward. So it
seemed to him, but an exclamation of dismayed warning broke from
Harry's lips; it was the heavy marble itself, its too frail support
shattered by the attack, which was falling. He sprang forward.
But he reached the spot too late. The great bust came crashing from
its height full upon Chilly's breast, and with a choked cry he went
down beneath it.
The others rushed to him and between them the massive stone was lifted
from the broken body. "Call up a doctor," Harry ordered the steward.
"Get the nearest--tell him to hurry; Mr. Allen is badly hurt." To the
rest he said, "Nothing must be known, as to how this happened, outside
this room. It was an accident, remember, nothing more. The shelf was
weak and the bust fell."
When the doctor came in, the crushed form lay upon a couch hastily
improvised from chair-cushions. Blood was welling from the pale lips.
He made a hasty examination, then looked up and shook his head.
"Better fetch his father and mother," he said, "and as quickly as
possible."
"I will go," volunteered Brent. "My car is at the theatre. I can do
it in twenty minutes." He went out quickly, while the man of medicine
opened his case and busied himself with restoratives.
To Harry, who stood watching with the others, it seemed that these were
to be of no avail, but after a sensible interval Chilly opened his
eyes. He gazed at the professional face so near--at the other shocked
countenances grouped about. He saw the bust lying on its side.
"I'm--sober now," he gasped. "I was--seeing things, eh? But I seem to
be--hurt. What's the matter?"
"The marble fell and struck you," said Harry.
A spasm of pain caught Chilly and he groaned. "I remember," he said,
and then, after a pause, "Am I--badly off?"
"I'm afraid so," said the doctor.
The pity in the tone conveyed its message. A tremor ran over Chilly's
face. There was a long moment's silence.
"Have I--much time?"
"Not very much," answered the other gently.
Chilly caught a breath that was half a sob. "Poor little Nancy!" he
whispered.
He looked up at the men who stood about him, "I would like--" he said,
hesitatingly but clearly, "I would be glad if some--explanation might
be made of this--occurrence--which would not involve unnecessary pain
to the Duchess. Perhaps that is--impossible. But I would--be
grateful--"
One of the younger men leaned beside him. It was Lee Carter, his
closest friend, who had brought him that afternoon from the Springs.
"Dear old chap!" he said, brokenly. "I was standing just under it.
You saw it topple and jumped to save me! That is how it happened!
Every one of us saw it."
A wan smile touched the whitening lips, "Gentlemen all!" said Chilly,
and closed his eyes.
He lay silent then--he was breathing with increasing difficulty. At
length there was the sound of a motor halting outside, and Harry and
the rest went out.
In the quiet of the room the door opened upon Judge and Mrs. Allen.
She was deadly pale, her face frozen with anguish. She knelt beside
the prostrate figure and took the cold hand of her son in hers.
"Chilly!" she cried. "My poor, poor boy!"
His eyes opened. He seemed, in that last fading instant, to see only
her. "Duchess!" he whispered, and with the word the light died in his
face. "Duchess!"
Mrs. Allen looked at the Judge's quivering countenance with dull blank
eyes, that saw two great tears suddenly detach themselves and roll down
his pale cheeks. He took a step toward her.
"Charlotte--" he stammered. "Charlotte!"
There was in the shaking voice something that pierced her agony, a tone
that she had not heard on his lips for many, many long years--an echo
of accents that she had known when she was a bride. She gazed at him
an instant voicelessly.
Then all at once her face broke up and a wild cry tore itself upward
from her heart. It was not the voice now of cold and placid scorn, but
that of the real woman--the eternal voice of Rachel weeping for her
children. The sword of overwhelming tragedy had stripped off the
protecting cicatrice of pride and arrogant resentment and bared the
lonely soul beneath, that in this shuddering instant groped wildly for
human comfort.
The Judge bent down and clasped her, and there, above the body of
Chilly, for the first time since the son who lay dead before them had
been born, she lay in her husband's arms, her face turned against his
breast.