THE TEST
Martin had guided his horse round the triangle of sweet-williams and,
still torn by conflicting emotions of ecstasy and self-reproach, was
proceeding down the driveway when a cry of distress reached his ear:
"Martin--Mr. Howe!"
He turned to see Lucy Webster beckoning frantically to him from the door.
"Come back, please," she cried. "Hurry!"
That she was excited was evident. Indeed she must have been quite out of
her mind to have called him Martin in that shameless fashion. The fact
that the name had slipped so spontaneously from her lips and that she
hastened to correct her mistake caused the man to speculate with delight
as to whether she was wont to think of him by this familiar cognomen. This
thought, however, was of minor importance, the flash of an instant. What
chiefly disturbed Martin was the girl's agitation.
Bringing his horse to a stop, he sped back to where she was standing, and
on reaching her side he was startled to see that the face but a short
interval before so radiant had blanched to a deathly pallor.
"My aunt!" she whispered in a frightened tone. "Something terrible has
happened to her!"
If Lucy entertained any doubts as to whether he would aid her in the
present emergency she had either cast them aside or was determined to
ignore such a possibility, for she held the door open with the obvious
expectation that he would follow her into the house.
A year ago, a month, nay--a week, he would never have consented to cross
the Webster threshold, let alone offer any assistance to its mistress; but
the siren who beckoned him on had cast such a potent spell over his will
that now without open protest, although with a certain inward compunction,
he followed her through the hall into the kitchen.
Upon the floor was stretched Ellen Webster--crumpled, helpless, inert--her
eyes closed and her stern face set as in a death mask. How long she had
lain there it was impossible to tell. If she had called for succor it had
been to empty walls.
As with mingled sensations Martin stood looking down upon her unconscious
form, Lucy threw herself upon her knees beside the woman and gently
touched her wrists and heart.
"She isn't dead," she murmured presently. "She must either have had a fall
or some sort of shock. We must get her upstairs and send for a doctor."
The "_we_" told Martin that the girl had not even considered the chance of
his refusing to come to her assistance.
"Tony is in the village," she went on, "and I don't know what I should
have done but for you. How fortunate that you were here!"
Was it fortunate? Martin asked himself.
At last the moment for which he had longed and prayed had come,--the
moment when the fate of his enemy lay in his hands, and it was within his
power to grant or deny succor. There had never been a question in his mind
what he would do should this opportunity arise. Had he not declared over
and over again that Ellen Webster might die before he would lift a finger
to help her? He had meant it too. All the bitterness of his soul had gone
into the vow. And now here he was confronted by the very emergency he had
craved from Fortune. The woman he hated was at his mercy. What should he
do? Should he stand stanchly by his word and let her life go out into the
Beyond when he might perhaps stay its flight? Or should he weakly
repudiate his word and call her from the borderland to continue to taunt
and torment him? If a doctor were not summoned quickly she might die, and
her death be upon his soul. Did he wish to stain himself with this
crime,--for crime it would be. Was the revenge worth the hours of
self-condemnation that might follow? Who was he that he should judge Ellen
Webster and cut off her life before its time? Vengeance is mine: I will
repay, saith the Lord.
The phrase rang insistently in Martin's ears. He tried to stifle
it--ignore it--but still the assertion continued to repeat itself within
his consciousness. Suppose, tempted by his weaker nature and the appealing
eyes of Lucy, he were to yield to his better self and adopt a merciful
attitude, might not Ellen be restored to health and jeer at him to the
end of his days for his magnanimity? Hers was not the creed "If thine
enemy hunger." She would call him coward and accuse him of a feeble,
intimidated will. Were the case to be reversed, she would never curb her
hatred to prolong his existence; of that he was certain. He could see her
now bending over him, her thumb turned down with the majestic fearlessness
of a Caesar. She would term her act justice, and she would carry out the
sentence without a tremor.
But now that the same chance had come to him, and he saw the old woman
stretched before him, her thin white hair snowy against the wooden
flooring, a vague pity stirred in his heart. Death must come to us all
sometime; but how tragic to have its approach unheralded, granting not an
instant in which to raise a prayer to Heaven. No, he could not let his
worst foe go down to the grave thus. He was the captain of his own soul,
but not of Ellen Webster's.
He glanced up to find Lucy's gaze fixed upon him. There was horror and
anguish in her eyes, and he realized that she had read aright the
temptation that assailed him. She did not speak, she seemed scarcely to
breathe: but the pleading face told him that should he yield to his
darker passions and show no pity, she would forever loathe him for his
cruelty. Plainly as he saw this, however, it was not to her silent
entreaty that he surrendered. Something deeper than love was calling him.
"Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not
charity----" How persistently the sentences came to him! They seemed to
echo from out his memory--in his mother's voice--the voice of a vanished
past. She had taught him the words when he was a boy, and he had not
thought of them since. Why did they now surge into his mind to weaken his
resolve and cause him to waver in his intention? He wished he could get
away from Lucy's eyes and the sight of the woman upon the floor. Had his
mother lived, she might sometime have been as frail as this and had hair
as white. A sob broke from him, and he stooped over his fallen foe.
"Where do you want I should carry her?" he asked, raising the limp body in
his arms.
Lucy did not answer at once, and when she did her reply was unsteady.
"The room is at the head of the stairs," she said, struggling to speak in
her customary tone. "Maybe I'd better go first."
The hushed intimacy of the tragedy suddenly brought the man and the woman
very close together.
She led the way and he followed with his helpless burden. The form he bore
was not heavy. In fact, it was so fragile that it seemed impossible that
it could harbor so much venom and hatred.
Ellen Webster was, after all, nothing but an old, old woman. Perhaps, he
reflected, in a wave of regret, he should have realized this and made
allowance for it. Then a reaction from his tense emotion swept over him,
and he thought with amusement how angry she would be should she suddenly
regain consciousness and find herself within his grasp.
But she did not come to herself, and when he laid her on the bed that Lucy
had prepared, she was still as unmindful of his touch as she would have
been had the spirit within her really taken flight.
Martin did not linger now. His decision was made.
"I'll step over home an' get the other horse an' team, an' fetch the
doctor back," he said quietly.
"I wish you would."
She did not thank him, accepting the favor with the simplicity of a weaker
nature that leans unabashed on a stronger. Her dependence and her
confession of it thrilled him with pleasure. She heard him creep
cautiously down over the stairs and go out at the side door.
Then she turned her attention to making more comfortable the helpless
woman upon the bed. When at length there was nothing more she could do,
she sat down to wait the doctor's coming. The time dragged on. It seemed
an eternity before help came.
In the meantime Ellen lay immovable as she had done from the first, her
hard, sharp-cut features harder and more sharply defined in their pallor
than the girl had realized them to be. In the furrowed brow, the deep-set
eyes, the pitiless mouth there was not one gentle line which death could
borrow to soften the stamp with which revenge and bitterness had branded
her. So she would look in her coffin, Lucy thought with awe. Majesty might
come into her face in the last great moment; but it would be the majesty
of hate, not of love.
What a sad, sad ending to a life!
As the girl sat thinking of the friendless, isolated existence of the
woman before her, she wondered idly what her aunt would have been, if,
while her nature was still plastic, she had married and sacrificed her ego
in years of service for others. Ah, she would never then have come to this
lonely, embittered old age! Children would have prattled at her knee, and
their children would have made glad the silent house. How full of joy and
opportunity such an existence would have been!
But these blessings, alas, had not been granted Ellen. Perhaps it had been
her own fault. She may deliberately have thrust the gentle visitant, Love,
from her dwelling, and once repulsed he may never have sought again for
entrance.
Or it might be the woman was one at whose door the god had never knocked.
Oh, the pity of it!
For after all did life hold any gift so rare, so supreme, as the perfect
devotion of a man and woman who loved one another. It must be a wonderful
thing, that divine miracle of Love.
Dreamily Lucy's gaze wandered off to the sunny fields, and with solemn
realization it came to her that should Ellen die, they and all the Webster
lands would be hers, to do with as she pleased. There were so many things
she had been powerless to get her aunt to do. The house needed repairs if
it were to be preserved for coming generations: certain patches of soil
had been worked too long and should be allowed to lie fallow; there were
scores of other improvements she would like to see carried out. Now she
would be free to better the property as she saw fit. She would talk with
Martin Howe about it. He was brimming with all the latest farming methods.
She would get him to buy her a cultivator such as he used in his own
garden, and a wheel-hoe. He could advise her, too, about plowing buckwheat
into the soil. And Martin would know what to do about shingling the barn
and cementing the cellar.
In fact, it was amazing to discover how inseparable Martin seemed to be
from her plans. He was so strong, so wise, just the type of man a woman
could depend upon for sympathy and guidance. Absently she twisted the
ring on her finger.
Her mind had traveled to the events of the morning, to his battle with
himself and final victory. How appealing had been his surrender! The stern
personality had melted into a tenderness as winning as a child's.
If he loved a woman and she loved him---- She started guiltily to find
Ellen staring at her with vague, troubled eyes.
"Where--where--am--I--?" asked the woman in a weak, quavering voice.
"Upstairs in your own room, Aunt Ellen," replied Lucy gently.
"How'd I come here?"
"You didn't feel very well."
"Yes. I remember now. I fell, didn't I?"
"I'm afraid so."
"I was fussin' at somethin', an' it made me dizzy. 'Twas the heat, I
guess. Where'd you find me?"
"In the kitchen."
"An' you managed to bring me here?"
Her niece hesitated.
"Yes," she answered firmly.
Ellen paused and with dread the girl awaited her next question. But no
question came. Either the clouded mind was in too vague a mood to grasp
details, or the invalid did not care. She seemed to be thinking.
"So I fell," she repeated at last.
"Yes."
Again there was a pause, and during the stillness Lucy plainly heard the
sound of approaching wagon wheels. It must be Martin with the doctor. She
rose softly.
"Where you goin'?" demanded her aunt.
"Just downstairs a minute. I think the doctor----"
"You didn't send Tony for the doctor!" the invalid exclaimed, a feeble
querulousness vibrating in the words.
"Yes; I didn't know what else to do."
"He can't help any."
"Perhaps he can."
"I tell you he can't," snapped Ellen. "I know well enough what's the
matter with me without bein' told. I've had a shock. My feet are all cold
and numb: I can't feel nothin' in 'em, nor move 'em. There ain't no remedy
for that. You're only wastin' money gettin' the man here to tell me what I
already know. I shan't see him."
Lucy waited a moment.
"I'm sorry I sent for him if you don't want him," she said. "But now that
he is here, don't you think he'd better come up? We don't need to have him
come again."
Ellen did not respond at once. Then with more animation than she had
exhibited, she said:
"I s'pose we'll have to pay him whether he comes up or not, so I may's
well get my money's worth out of him. Go and fetch him. He'll likely be
tickled to death to see with his own eyes how bad off I am so'st he can go
back an' blab the news in the village. Folks will be thankful to have
something new to talk about."
Lucy could not but smile at the characteristic remark. She went out and
soon returned with Doctor Marsh tiptoeing gingerly behind her.
He was a heavy, florid man whom the combination of heat and speed had
transformed into a panting mechanism. Mopping the beads of perspiration
from his brow, he started to seat himself at Ellen's bedside, but the
woman waved him off.
"Don't come any nearer," she called, "and don't bring that bag of pills
and plasters in here, either. I shan't need nothin' you've got. I know
that well's you do; an' I know better'n you do that there ain't no help
for me. You needn't stay, an' you needn't come in. Good mornin'."
Having delivered herself of this ultimatum at a single breath, Ellen
turned her head and closed her eyes.
The doctor looked at her in astonishment but did not move.
"Clip right along home," reiterated the sick woman without looking at the
physician. "My niece'll pay you as you go out. I reckon you won't charge
more'n half price, since you ain't done nothin'."
"I usually have----"
"Mebbe. But this call ain't like your usual ones, is it?"
"No," responded the doctor with dignity, "I can't say that it is."
"Then you can't expect to get so much for it," piped Ellen triumphantly.
"My niece will settle with you. Give him a dollar, Lucy--not a cent more.
He'll have fun enough gossipin' about me to make up the rest of the fee."
Doctor Marsh, his face a study in outraged decorum, stalked indignantly
from the room. Ellen, peeping from beneath her lids, watched him with
satisfaction.
"Has he gone?" she demanded, when Lucy returned.
"Yes."
"Thank the Lord. The fool doesn't know anything, anyway. Now you go back
downstairs an' finish up your work. There ain't no call for you to be
idlin' the day out, even if I am."
"I don't like to leave you alone."
"Pooh, pooh! I can't no more'n die, an' if I was to start doin' that you
couldn't stop me."
Lucy moved toward the door; then turning she remarked gently:
"I'm so sorry, Aunt Ellen."
"Eh?"
"I'm sorry you're ill."
"Are you?" questioned the old woman, searching the girl's face with her
small, flinty eyes. "Mebbe you are. You generally tell the truth. I guess
if you do feel so, you're the only one; an' I don't quite see how even you
can be."
"I am."
Her aunt fingered the sheet nervously.
"You're a good girl, Lucy," she presently observed in a weary tone. "You
won't lose nothin' by it, neither."
Embarrassed, her niece started from the room.
"Come back here a minute," muttered the woman drowsily. "I want to speak
to you."
Lucy recrossed the threshold and bent over Ellen, who had sunk back on the
pillows and was beckoning to her with a feeble, exhausted hand.
"You'll stay by me, won't you?" she pleaded in a whisper, for the first
time displaying a consciousness of her helpless, dependent condition.
"Promise you won't desert me. I'm leavin' you the place an' ten thousand
dollars."