The logs on the hearth leaped and crackled, spurting tongues of blue
flame, and after they had roared up to their fullest they slowly
subsided, until the shadows about the walls spread and encroached from
their corners toward the center of the room. The polish of furniture and
the bright angles of silver and bric-à-brac stood out with diminishing
high-lights. Hour by hour and minute by minute the faces of two unmoving
figures seated on a low and heavily cushioned couch grew less clear and
merged into the growing darkness.
Then the logs glowed only as embers against their bed of white ashes and
the table lamp burned on in single steadfastness.
Silence held the place, abandoned now by the furies, to the smile on two
unstirring faces. The gray of the east had begun to brighten into the
rose that comes ahead of the sun, when slowly, as if struggling under a
weight of pyramids the heavy lids of one of the faces fluttered. They
fluttered with no recognition as yet of the difference between death and
life, realizing only the burden of an immeasurable inertia.
Almost imperceptibly the currents of submerged vitality began to steal
back into the veins of Conscience Tollman.
For ages she seemed struggling through the heavy shades of coma, and
even after she was able to see her surroundings, it was without a
realization of their significance.
She sat studying with an impersonal gaze the quiet figure at her side,
looking even at her own hand resting upon its shoulder with the same
absence of interest that she might have felt for another hand and
another shoulder.
But about the time that the sun came over the eastern skyline,
dissipating the mistiness of dawn into the birth of a new day, she
crossed the line between the palpable and impalpable, and her brain
began to awaken to the need of battle with this lethargy.
The unmoving figure at her side was no longer simply an object upon
which her eyes dwelt without recognition, but the man she loved and was
sending away, and the hand which rested on his shoulder must no longer
lie there idle.
Then with all its complicated features of phenomena, the bewilderment of
the situation burst on her, and she struggled to her feet, reeling under
the assaults of dizziness and weakness and wonderment.
How had they come to be sitting there in that unaccountable fashion
together and alone, while the first brightness of morning stole in at
the French windows and the lamp burned on with its sickly mingling of
day and night and the fresh breeze swept in through a broken and
flapping door?
Where was Eben?
Conscience raised her voice--still weak from the drug--and called
wildly, but there was little sound and no answer. Undefined but strong,
the realization struck in upon her that tragedy in some monstrous shape
had entered the place and left its impress.
She stood, still groping with amazement, and her hands rose with a
fumbling uncertainty until the touch of their fingers fell upon the
bosom from which the drapery had been torn, and instinctively gathered
it again over her breast and throat.
But whatever the riddle might portend it could await construction. One
primary fact proclaimed itself in terms so clear and unmistakable that
all else was lost.
Stuart seemed lifeless. She herself had the feeling of one who had been
tangled in the fringes of death: who had struggled out of the meshes of
a fatal web.
He had saved her, when she was too weak to fight--it all seemed very
long ago.... She loved him.... She must save him now.
She knelt at his side, chafing his wrists and trying his heart with ear
and touch--her eyes wide with almost hopeless forebodings.
At last she rose and pressed her hands tight to her throbbing temples.
"Thank God," she whispered, for a faint flutter of life had rewarded her
investigation. In a bewildered voice she murmured: "I must think. I must
remember! We were all sitting here--we were talking."
Again she called, feebly at first, then with a growing strength, for her
husband, and when no answer came except the echo of her own voice, she
left the room and went gropingly, supporting herself against furniture
and wall, to the telephone--but the telephone, too, was dead. The storm
had done that.
Confused now with a torrent of alarms and a sense of futility, she came
back to the man whose life seemed so tenuously suspended, having no plan
beyond a Valkyrie passion of resolution to bring him back from the
border of death by the sheer force of invincible will. She succeeded,
after many attempts, in shifting him from his sitting posture to a
greater ease. Between his still lips she forced brandy.
After ages of suspense and vigil, with his head on her lap and her
fingers wildly working at his wrists, she vacillated terribly between
the hope that life was returning and the fear that it was waning. After
other ages she saw his lids flicker almost imperceptibly and then, when
anxiety had taken a heavy toll, his eyes looked up in uncomprehending
life. Conscience bent her face close to his and there was breath on his
lips and nostrils. Eben had been a Machiavelli in spirit only. In
effect he had bungled.
* * * * *
Mystery still hung over the house of Eben Tollman an hour or two later,
but the two figures that had sat with the quietness of unaccomplished
death were again sensate and restored to full consciousness.
Conscience had been able to go to her own room, and Stuart, now dressed,
came slowly and as yet somewhat haltingly down the stairs, holding
carefully to the rail. He was setting out to search for Eben Tollman,
and to call in medical help. But in the hall he paused, and then,
turning on impulse, went slowly into the living-room.
There he stood looking about as a man who has dropped from his own
planet to one wholly unfamiliar may seek to take his bearings.
His eyes fell as he paused on two patches of white which showed against
the dark richness of the rugs and laboriously he picked them up. One was
a yellow envelope inscribed "S. F. & C. W."
As a sudden blow may bring back a lost identity to the victim of amnesia
the discovery electrified the man and he straightened into an abrupt
erectness. His features lost their sleep-walking indefiniteness and his
jaw stiffened.
As the significance of his discovery dawned on him, a pallor quite
separate from that of his condition came over his face and a murder
light broke in his eyes. He would go on with his search for Eben, but
when he found him now--! He wheeled suddenly and began looking at the
table, and across the confused screen of his brain flashed a complete
picture and an understanding.
Then he studied the other and smaller envelope--and recognized it as the
one which Dr. Ebbett had given Eben Tollman when they talked of a
merciful release for the dog that had outlived his enjoyment of life.
"I don't believe I'll ever find him--alive," he said very slowly, under
his breath; "I think I understand."
Then after a moment of grave reflection he added:
"I don't see why she need know it all," and he dropped the two letters
and the small envelope upon the dead logs and touched a match to their
edges. Then he carried three wine glasses out to the pantry, and
carefully washed them, pouring again a few drops of clear wine, like
residue, into their bottoms. "Coroners are inquisitive," he told himself
musingly.
After that he opened the door and went out into the morning, which,
succeeding the storm, was a morning of sunlight.
THE END
End of Project Gutenberg's The Tyranny of Weakness, by Charles Neville Buck