A STRANGE VIGIL.
Had Jason fainted, as I thought he had, his enemy would have been upon
him before I was aware of his presence even. As it was, in an instant
I had interposed my body between them.
For a full minute, perhaps, we remained thus, like figures of stone,
before I found my voice.
“You can go back,” I said, never taking my eyes off him. “It’s too
late.”
He gave no answer, nor did he change his position.
“I won’t appeal to you,” I said, “by any claim of old friendship, to
leave this poor wretch in peace. If common humanity can make no way
with you, how shall any words of mine?”
He made a little sidling movement, to which I corresponded with a
like.
“You’re welcome to measure your strength with mine,” I said. “You’ll
have to do it before you can think to get at him.”
He looked at me with glittering eyes, as if debating my power to stop
him.
“Duke!” I cried, “be merciful! If his crime was great, he has
repented.”
He spoke at last, screwing out an ugly high little chuckle, with a
straining of his whole body, like a cock crowing.
“Why, so have I!” he said. “There’s a place waiting for the two of us
among the blessed saints, while she’s frying down below.”
“It was hers to forgive, and she has forgiven, I know. Be merciful and
worthy of her you are to meet some day.”
“What can I do more disinterested, then, than send him repentant to
sit with her. There’s a noble revenge to take! If he’d stopped in
London I’d have allowed him a little longer, perhaps; but, as he wants
to escape, I must make sure, or the devil might have me by the leg,
you see.”
All the time we spoke, Jason was cowering among the hay, his breath
sounding in quick gasps. Now he gave out a pitiful moan, and Duke bent
his head waiting for a repetition, as if it were music to him.
“For the last time, be merciful, Duke.”
“Well, so I will.”
He spoke looking up at me, with his head still bent sideways, and, in
that position, felt in one of his pockets.
“If the gentleman will condescend to take this,” he said, standing
suddenly erect and holding out a little white paper packet in his
hand, “I will go and welcome. But I must see him swallow it first.”
“Poison?”
“Not at all. A love potion--nothing more.”
Duke stole toward me insidiously, holding out the paper. The moment he
was within reach I struck it out of his hand. While my arm was yet in
the air, he came with a rush at me--caught his foot in a projecting
root--staggered and fell with a sliding thump upon the grass.
“Keep behind!” I shouted to Jason, who was uttering incoherent cries
and running to and fro like a thing smitten with a sunstroke. He
stopped at sound of my voice; then came and clung to me, feeling me to
be his last hope.
For a moment Duke lay as if stunned; then slowly gathered himself
together and rose to his feet--rose only to collapse again, with a
snarling curse of agony. He glowered up at us, moaning and muttering,
and nursing his injured limb; for so it seemed that, in falling, he
had cruelly twisted and sprained one of his ankles.
When the truth broke upon me I turned round upon my brother with a
great breath of gratitude and relief.
“Run!” I cried. “You can be miles away before he will be able to move,
even.”
Jason leaped from me, his eyes staring maniacally.
“You fool!” I cried; “go! Leave him to me! You can be at Southampton
before he is out of the field here. Even if he is able to walk by
morning, which I doubt, he has me to reckon with!”
Some little nerve came to him, once standing outside the baneful
influence of the eyes. He dashed his hand across his forehead, gave me
one rapid, wild glance of gratitude and renewed hope, and, turning,
ran for his life into the darkness.
As his footsteps clattered faintly down the road I returned to grapple
with his enemy.
I almost stumbled over him as I turned the corner. He had rolled and
struggled so far in his rabid frenzy; and now, seeing me come back
alone, he set up a yell of rage, reviling and cursing me and hurling
impotent lightnings of hate after his escaped victim.
Gradually the storm of his passion mouthed itself away and he lay
silent on the ground like a dead thing. Then I moved to him; knelt and
softly pulled him by the sleeve.
“Duke, shall I bind it up for you?”
“What? My heart?” He spoke with his face in the grass. “Bind it in a
sling, you fool--it’s a heavy stone--and smite the accursed Philistine
on the forehead with it.”
“Has this bitter trouble dehumanized you altogether? Do you blame me
in this? He was my brother.”
“And you were my friend. What is the value of it all? I would have
crushed you like a beetle if you stood in my way to him. Deviltry is
the only happiness. I think he was beforehand with me in that. What a
poor idiot to let him be! I might have enjoyed a minute’s bliss for
the price of my soul, and now my only hope of it is by killing him.”
“That you shall never do if I can prevent it.”
He rolled over on his back, thrust his arms beneath his head and lay
staring at me with deeply melancholy eyes.
“Let’s cry an armistice for the night,” he said, in a low, gentle
voice.
“Forever, Duke!”
“Between us two? Why not--on all questions but the one?”
“Find some pity in your heart, even for him.”
“Never!” He jerked out an arm and shook it savagely at the sky.
“Never!”
I gave a heavy sigh.
“Well,” I said, “let’s look to your foot, at least.”
“Is he beyond my reach?”
“Quite. You can put it out of your head. Even if your limb were sound
you’d never catch him now. With the morning they go abroad.”
“Where to?”
“Honestly, I don’t know.”
“You found him the funds?”
“Yes.”
He groaned and turned his face away for a moment. I busied myself over
his bruised ankle. Presently he said:
“How long am I to lie here?”
“Till I can see to cut you a stick from the hedge. You wouldn’t be
able to limp a step without one.”
“Very well. Will you sit by me?”
“As long as you like.”
“I have no likes or dislikes now, Renny, and only one hate.”
“We won’t talk of that.”
“Not now. This field is the neutral ground. Once outside it, the
armistice ends.”
“Duke!”
“How can it be otherwise, Renny, my old friend? Are you going to back
me in the chase? Unless you do, you must see that it is impossible for
us to come together.”
“I see nothing--feel nothing, but a vast, interminable sorrow, Duke.”
“And I--you have a gentle hand, Renny. So had she. She bound up my
wrist for me once, when I had crushed it in the galley-puller. Shall
we recall those days?”
My heart swelled to hear him in this softened mood, as I thought.
Alas! It was only a brief interval of lucidity in his madness.
“Ah, if we could look beyond!” I finally answered, with a deep sigh.
“We can--we do. Imagination isn’t guided by rule of thumb. Even here
the promise dawns slowly. Scabs are thickest on the body when it’s
healing of its fever. They will fall off by and by, for all the dismal
shrieks that degeneration has seized us.”
He closed his eyes and lay back upon his hands once more.
“Imagination? Was this ever my world? There is a wide green forest,
and the murmur of its running brooks is all of faces sweet as flowers
and voices that I know, for I heard them long ago in a time before I
existed here. And I walk on, free forever of the aching past; the
eternity of most beautiful possibilities and discoveries before me;
joyous all through but for one sad little longing that encumbers me.
Not for long--no, not for long. On a lawn fragrant with loving flowers
and gathered here and there to deep silence by the stooping shadows, I
come upon her--my love; my dear, dear love. And she kisses the sorrow
from my eyes, and holds me to her and whispers, ‘You have come at
last.’”
His voice broke with a sob. Glancing at him, I saw the tears running
down his cheeks. This grief was sacred from word of mine. I rose
softly and set to pacing the meadow at a little distance. By and by,
when I returned, I saw him sitting up. The mood had passed, but he was
still gentle and human.
Till dawn was faint in the sky we sat and talked the dark hours away.
The sun had risen and Duke was watching something in the grass, when
suddenly he shook himself and turned to me.
“Cut me my stick, Renny,” he said. “The pilgrim must be journeying.”
“Come home with me, Duke.”
He shook his head.
“Look!” he said, “I have tried to read a lesson of a spider as Bruce
did. I broke and tangled the little fellow’s web like a wanton and
what did he do but roll the rubbish up into a ball and swallow it. I
can’t get rid of my web in that way, Renny.”
I did my utmost to hold him to his softer mind. He would not listen,
but drove me from him.
“Cut me my stick,” he said, “or I shall have to crawl down the road on
all fours.”
I did his bidding sadly. Propped up by me on one side, he was able
with the help of his staff to limp painfully from the field. Outside
it, he sat himself down on the hedge bank.
“Good-morning, Mr. Trender,” he said.
“Duke, let me at least help you to the town.”
“Not a step, I’m obliged to you. I shall get on very well by and by.
Good-morning.”
I seized and shook his hand--it dropped listlessly from
mine--hesitated; looked in his face, and, turning from him, strode
sorrowfully off homeward.