A MEETING ON THE BRIDGE.
It was not immediate death that had alighted, but death’s forerunner,
paralysis. I realized this in a moment. The mute and stricken figure;
the closed eyes; the darkly flushed face wrenched to the right and the
flapping breath issuing one-sided from the lips--I needed no
experience to read the meaning of these.
I ran to the head of the stairs and shrieked to old Peggy to come up.
Then I hurried to the dressing-table and lighted a candle that stood
thereon. As I took it in my hand to approach the bed, a pane in the
lattice behind me went with a splintering noise, and something whizzed
past my head like a hornet, and a fragment of plaster spun from the
wall near. At the same instant a little muffled sound, no louder in
the tumult of hail than the smack of an elastic band on paper, came
from the street outside.
Instinctively I winced and dodged, not knowing for the moment what had
happened, then in the midst of my distraction, fury seized me like a
snake.
The blind was up; my figure plainly visible from the bridge as I
crossed the room. The madman outside had shot at me, whether from pure
deviltry or because he took me for Jason I neither knew nor cared.
Coming on the head of my trouble, the deed seemed wantonly diabolical.
Had I been master of my actions I think I should then and there have
rushed forth and grappled with the evil creature and crushed the life
out of him. As it was I ran to the window and dashed it open and
leaned forth.
He was there on the bridge still; standing up in the pelting storm;
bare-headed, fantastic--a thing of nameless expression.
I shrieked to him and cursed him. I menaced him with my fists. For the
moment I was near as much madman as he.
Perhaps some words of my outcry reached him through the hurtling of
the storm. Perhaps he recognized me, for I saw him shrink down and
cower behind the stones of the bridge. I rattled to the window, pulled
down the blind and turned myself to the stricken figure on the bed. As
I did so old Peggy came breathing and shambling into the room.
“What’s to do?” she said, coughing feebly and glaring at me. “What’s
to do, Renalt?”
“Look there! What’s happened--what’s the matter with him? It is death,
perhaps!”
She shuffled to the bedside, holding in her groaning chest with one
hand. For a minute she must have stood gazing down.
“Ay,” she said at last, leering round at me. “The Lord mistook the
room, looking in at winder. Ralph it was were wanted--not old Peggy,
praise to His goodness.”
“Is he dying?”
“Maybe--maybe not yet awhile. The dumbstroke have tuk him.”
“Paralysis?”
“So they carls it. Better ax the doctor.”
“Look you to him, then, and look well, while I run out to seek for
one. I leave him in your charge.”
I took her by the arm and stared in her face as I spoke. My expression
must have been frowning and threatening, but indeed I mistrusted the
old vagabond. She shrunk from me with a twitch of fear.
“He’ll come round wi’ his face to the judgment,” she said; and I left
her standing by the bedside and hurried from the house.
Leaving the yard, I turned sharply round upon the bridge. The storm
had yielded, but the ground was yet thickly strewed with white. Not a
soul seemed to be abroad. Only low down against the parapet of the
bridge was a single living thing, and it crouched huddled as if the
storm had claimed a victim before it passed.
My brain still burned with fury over the foul action that had so
nearly sent me from my father in his utmost need. I could think of
nothing at the moment but revenge, of nothing but that I must sweep
this horror into the river before I could hope to deal collectedly
with the fatality that had befallen me. I only feared that it would
escape me, and leaped on it, mad with rage.
I tore him up to his feet and held him from me with a savage gaze, and
he looked at me with a dark, amazed stare, but there was no terror in
his eyes. And even as I held him I saw in the dim lamplight how worn
and haggard he had grown, how sunken was his white face, how fearfully
the monomania of revenge had rent him with its jagged teeth.
“You dog!” I said. “You end in the millrace here--do you understand?
You are a murderer in will and would have been in deed if your aim had
answered true to your devil’s heart! Down with you!”
I closed with him, but he still struggled to hold me off.
“I thought it was he--the other. He’s left London. He must be here
somewhere.”
There was no deprecation in his tone. He spoke in a small dry voice
and with an air as if none could doubt that he was justified in his
pursuit and must stand aside or suffer by it rather than that it
should cease.
“Where he is I neither know nor care,” I answered, set and stern.
“You’ve raised your hand to me at last, dog that you are, and that’s
my concern. I should have known at first--that it’s useless arguing
mercy with a devil.”
I had my arms round him like steel bands. Once he might have been my
match, or better, but not now in his state of physical degeneration.
“Yes, end it,” he whispered. “I always thought to die by water as she
did. The chase here is exhausting me. I can finish my task more
effectively from the other side the grave.”
I gave a mocking laugh.
“You shall purge your hate in fire, there,” I said. “Ghostly revenge
on the living is an old wives’ tale.”
He struggled to force an arm free and pointed down at the foaming
mill-tail.
“There’s a voice there,” he cried, “that says otherwise. I read it,
and so do you, for all your shaking heroics. Fling me down! I escape
the self-destruction that was to come. Fling me down and end it!”
I tightened my arms about him. The first desperate fury of my mood was
leading me and with it the impulse to murder. The wan, once-dear
features were appealing to me against their will and mine.
Suddenly, while I wavered, an appalling screech burst from him; he
wrenched himself free of me with one mad superhuman effort, struck out
at the empty air, and turned and fled across the bridge and up toward
the hill beyond. In a moment he was lost to sight in the darkness.
In the shock of his escape I twisted about to see what had so moved
him--and, not a yard behind me, was standing Dr. Crackenthorpe.
For many seconds we stared at one another speechless and motionless.
His face was pale and set very grimly.
At last he spoke, and “Murder!” was the word he muttered.
“He runs fast for a murdered man,” I said, with a sneer.
“Who was it?” he said, gazing with a strange, fixed expression up the
dark blown hill.
“A ghost,” I answered, with a reckless laugh. “The town is full of
them to-night.”
He looked at me gloomily. I could have thought he shivered slightly.
“Do you know him?”
“He was my friend once. Stand out of my way. I’ve an errand on hand.
My father’s had a seizure.”
“Had a--come, I’ll go see him.”
“You won’t. I won’t have you near him. Stand out of my way.”
“You’re a fool. Promptness is everything in such cases.”
I hesitated. For what his professional opinion was worth, this man had
always stood to us as adviser in such small ailments as we suffered. I
had no notion where to seek another. My father would be unconscious of
his presence. At least he could pronounce upon the nature of the
stroke.
“Very well,” I said, ungraciously. “You can see him and judge what’s
the matter.”
The old man was lying as I had left him when we entered the bedroom.
His eyes were still closed, and his breathing sounded hard and
stertorious.
“He’s mortal bad, sir,” Peggy said. “He’ll die hard, I do believe.”
Dr. Crackenthorpe waved her away and bent over the prostrate figure.
As he did so its eyelids seemed to flicker, as if with dread
consciousness of his approach.
“Be quick!” I said. “What has happened?”
He felt the dying pulse; bent his yellow face and listened at the
heart. He was some minutes occupied.
Presently he rose and came to me, all formal and professional.
“You must prepare for the worst,” he said. “He may speak again by and
by, but I doubt it. In my opinion it is a question of a few days only.
No medical skill can avail.”
“Is there nothing I can do?”
“Nothing.”
He bowed to me stiffly.
“I am at your service,” he said, in a cold voice. “If I can be of any
further use to you, you will let me know. You are not ignorant of
where to find me, I believe.”
He was walking to the door, but turned and came toward me again.
“That one-time friend of yours,” he said. “Is he stopping in the
town?”
“I really don’t know, Dr. Crackenthorpe. I met him by chance, and you
saw he ran from me. You seem interested in him.”
“He--yes; he struck me as bearing a likeness to a--to a patient I once
attended. Good-night.”