There were telegrams from Stephen Lorimer and the doctor; James King's
condition remained unchanged. Honor and Jimsy decided to return at once,
but Richard King flatly refused to let them go. The next train after
Honor's had been held up just beyond Córdoba by a band of brigands,
supposed to be a section of Villistas, the passengers robbed and
mistreated and three of the train men killed.
"Not a step without an escort," said Jimsy's uncle.
Then Jimsy's new friend came to the rescue. He was eager to get home but
cannily aware of his own especial risk,--two wealthy Americans having
been recently taken and held for ransom. He had influence at the
Capital; he wrote and telegraphed and the replies were suave and
reassuring; reliable escort would be furnished as soon as
possible,--within the week, it was hoped. Meanwhile, there was nothing
for it but to wait. He went back to the _hacienda_ where he had been
visiting, and life--the merry, lyrical life of _El Pozo_, moved forward.
Jimsy's only woe was that he was condemned by her own decision to share
Honor lavishly with his uncle and aunt and their friends and Carter.
"Skipper, after all these years, leaving me for a darn' tea!"
"Jimsy, dear," she scolded him, "you know that it's the very least I can
do, now isn't it--honestly? Think how lovely she's been to us, and how
much it means to her, having people here. And we've got all our lives
ahead of us, Jimsy! Be good! And besides"--she colored a little and
hesitated--"it's--not kind to Cartie." Then, at the sobering of his
face, "You know he--cares for me, Jimsy, and I don't believe it's just
cricket for us to--to sort of wave our happiness in his face all the
time."
He sighed crossly. "But--good Lord, Skipper,--he's got to get used to
it!"
"Of course,--but need we--rub it in, just now?" The fact was that Honor
was anxious. Carter was pallid, haggard, morose. The brief flare of
composure with which he had greeted her was gone; he showed visibly and
unpleasantly what he was suffering at the sight of their vivid and
hearty happiness. Mrs. King had commented pityingly on it to Honor and
it was simply not in the girl to go on adding to his misery. She began
to be very firm with Jimsy about their long walks or rides alone; she
accepted all Mrs. King's invitations and plans for them; she included
Carter whenever it was possible. These restrictions had naturally the
result of making Jimsy the more ardent in their scant privacy, and
Honor, amazingly free from coquetry though she was, must have sensed it.
Perhaps the truth was that she had in her, after all, something of
Mildred Lorimer's feeling for values and conventions; having flown from
Florence to Córdoba to her lover she was reclaiming a little of her
aloofness and cool ladyhood by this discipline. But she was entirely
honest in her wish to spare Carter so far as possible. Once, when Jimsy
was briefly away with his Yaqui henchman she asked Carter to walk with
her, but he decided for the dim _sala;_ the heat which seemed to
invigorate and vitalize Jimsy left him limp and spent.
He brushed her generalities roughly aside. "Are you happy, Honor?"
She lifted her candid eyes to his bleak young face. "Yes, Cartie.
Happier than ever before--and I've been happy all my life."
He was silent for a moment as if sorting out and considering the things
he might say to her. "Well, you have a marvelous effect on Jimsy. I
don't believe he's taken a drop since you've been here."
"He hasn't touched a drop since he came to Mexico, Carter,--Mr. King
told me that, and Jimsy told me himself!" Honor was a little declamatory
in her pride and he raised his eyebrows.
"Really?" He limped over to the table where the smoking things were and
the decanter of whiskey and siphon of soda. "Let me have a look...." He
picked up the decanter and held it to the light. "The last time I looked
at it, it came just to the top of the design here,--and it does yet.
Yes, it's just where it was."
"Carter! I call that spying!"
He turned back to her without temper. "I call it looking after my
friend," he said gently. "I don't suppose you've let him tell you very
much about what happened at college?"
"No, Carter. What's the use of it, now? He wrote it all to me, but the
letter must have passed me. It's a closed chapter now."
"I hope to God it will stay closed," he said, haggardly. "But I'm
afraid, Honor; I'm horribly afraid for you."
"I'm not afraid, Carter,--for myself or for Jimsy." She got up and
walked to the window; she was aware that she hated the dimness of the
_sala_; she wanted the honest heat of the sun. "Look!" she said, gladly.
Carter limped slowly to join her. Jimsy King was swinging toward them
through the brazen three o'clock glare, his Yaqui Juan by his side. They
were a sightly and eye-filling pair. They might have been done in bronze
for studies of Yesterday and To-day. "_Look_!" said Honor again. "Oh,
Carter, do you think any--any horrible dead trait--any clammy dead
hand--can reach up out of the grave to pull him down?"
Carter was silent.
A high and cleanly anger rose in the girl. "Carter, I don't want to hurt
you,--oh, I know I hurt you all the time, in one way, and I can't help
that,--I don't want to be unkind, but--are you sure it isn't because
you--care--for me that you have this hopeless feeling about Jimsy?" She
faced him squarely and made him meet her eyes. "Carter! Tell me."
His unhappy gaze struggled with her level look and slipped away. "Of
course I want you myself, Honor. I want you--horribly, unbearably, but I
do honestly feel it's wrong for you to marry Jimsy King."
"But, Carter--see how nearly his father won out! Every one says that if
his mother had lived--And his Uncle Richard! He's absolutely free from
it, now. And the very look of Jimsy is enough to show you----"
But Carter had turned and was staring moodily at the decanter. "It comes
so suddenly, Honor ... with such frightful unexpectedness. Remember,
when we were youngsters, the World's Biggest Snake, 'Samson,'--exhibited
in a vacant store on Main Street, and how keen we all were about him?"
Honor kindled to the memory. "I adored him. He had a head like a nice
setter's and he wasn't cold or slimy a bit!"
"Remember what the man told us about his hunger? How he'd go three
months without anything, and then devour twenty live rabbits and
chickens and cats?"
She nodded, frowning. "I know. It was awful."
"But the point was the suddenness. They never knew when the hunger would
seize him. The fellow said that it came like a flash. He was gentle as a
lamb for weeks on end--and then it came. He'd pounce on the keeper's pet
rabbit--his dog--the man himself if he were within reach. He was an
utterly changed creature; he was just--an _appetite_." He stood staring
somberly at the decanter. "That's the way it comes, Honor."
It seemed to be getting dimmer and dimmer in the _sala_. Honor found
herself wishing with all her heart for her stepfather. Stephen Lorimer
would know how to answer; how to parry,--to combat this thing. She felt
her own weapons clumsy and blunt, but such as they were she would use
them.
"But it isn't coming ever again, Carter! I tell you it isn't coming! And
I want you to stop saying and thinking that it is! Now I'm going to
Jimsy!"
In the wide out-of-doors, under the unbelievably blue sky and the
stinging sun, with Jimsy and Yaqui Juan, life was sound and whole again.
The Indian, tall as a pine, looked at her with eyes of respectful
adoration and smiled his slow, melancholy smile, as she swung off with
the boy, down the path which led to the old well.
"Juan approves of me, doesn't he?" said Honor, contentedly.
"Of course; you're my woman!" She loved his happy impudence. "Aren't
you, Skipper?" They had passed the twist in the path--the path which was
like a moist green tunnel through the tropic jungle--which hid them from
the house and she halted and went swiftly into his arms.
"Yes, Jimsy! _Yes!_ And--I've been stingy and mean to you but I won't
be, any more. Carter must just--stand things."
"_Skipper!_" He wasn't facile with words, Jimsy King, but he was able to
make himself clear.
"Jimsy, isn't it wonderful--the all-rightness of everything? Being
together again, and----"
"Going to be together always! And my job waiting! Isn't the old boy a
wonder? I saw him, just now. He says he's heard from Mexico City and
it's O. K. to start Thursday. They're going to send the escort."
"In two days," said Honor, blissfully, "we'll be on our way home! Jimsy,
in two days!"
But in two days dizzyingly, terrifyingly much had happened. The pleasant
little comedy of life at _El Pozo_ had changed to melodrama, crude and
strident. They had been attacked by a band of _insurrectos_, a wing of
Villa's hectic army, presumably; the _peóns_, with the exception of the
house servants and Yaqui Juan, had gone gleefully over to the enemy;
Richard King had been wounded in his hot-headed defense of his
_hacienda_, shot through the shoulder, and was running a temperature;
the telephone wires were cut; infinitely worse than all, the besiegers
had taken possession of the well and they were entirely without water.
There had been, of course, the usual supply in the house at the time of
the attack and it had been made to last as long as was humanly possible,
the lion's share going to the wounded man, but they had arrived, now, at
the point of actual suffering. His rôle of helpless inaction was an
intolerable one for Jimsy King to play. To know that--less than a
quarter of a mile away, down the moist green path through the tropic
verdure--was the well; to see Honor's dry lips and strained eyes,
Carter's deathly pallor, to hear his uncle, out of his head, mercifully,
most of the time, begging for water, meant a constant battle with
himself not to rush out, to make one frantic try at least, but he knew
that the deeper courage of patient waiting was required of him. They
could only conjecture what the invaders meant to do,--whether they
intended to have them die of thirst, whether they meant to rush the
house when it suited their pleasure--raggedly fortified and guarded by
Jimsy and Carter and the half dozen of the faithful. Jimsy had talked
the latter probability over steadily with Honor and she understood.
"Jimsy," she managed not to let her teeth chatter, "it's like a play
or--or a Wild West tale, isn't it? Like a 'Frank Merriwell'--remember
when you used to adore those things?"
"No, Skipper, it's not like a 'Frank Merriwell'; he could always _do_
something...." Jimsy's strong teeth ground together.
"Yes--'Blooey, blooey! Fifteen more redskins bit the dust!'"
"Skipper, you _wonder_! You brick!"
"Jimsy, I--there's no use talking about things that may never happen,
because _of course_ help will get here, but if it should not--if they
should rush us, and we couldn't keep them out"--her hoarse voice
faltered but her eyes held his--"you won't--you wouldn't let them--take
me, Jimsy?"
"No, Skipper."
"Promise, Jimsy?"
"Promise, Skipper. 'Cross my heart!'" The old good foolish words of the
old safe days, here, now, in this hideous and garish present!
With that pledge she was visibly able to give herself to a livelier
hope. "But of course Yaqui Juan got through to the Grants' _hacienda_!
Can you imagine him failing us, Jimsy?"
He shook his head. "He'll make it if any man living could." The Indian
had slipped through the _insurrectos_ in the first hour, as soon as it
had been known that the wires were cut. Unless the Grants, too, were
besieged, they would be able to telephone for help for _El Pozo_, and
if they were likewise in duress, Yaqui Juan would go on to the next
_rancho_,--on and on until he could set the wheels of rescue in motion.
"I wish to God I had his job. _Doing something_----"
Carter came into the _sala_. He was terrifyingly white but with an
admirable composure. "Steady, old boy," he said, putting his frail hand
on Jimsy's shoulder. "Sit tight! We depend on you. And you're doing"--he
looked at the decanter, as if measuring its contents with his
eye--"gloriously, splendidly, old son! I know the strain you're under.
You're a bigger man even than I thought you were, Jimsy."
Honor went away to sit with Mrs. King and the sick man and both boys
stared unhappily after her. "If Skipper were only out of this----" Jimsy
groaned.
"And whose fault is it that she's in it?" Carter snarled. Two red spots
sprang into his white cheeks.
"Why--Cart'!" Jimsy backed away from him, staring.
"Whose fault is it, I say?" Carter followed him. "If she hadn't been
terrified over you, if she hadn't the insane idea of duty and loyalty to
you, would she have come? Would she?"
Jimsy King sat down and looked at him, aghast. "Good Lord,
Cart'--that's the truth! That shows what a mutt I am. It hasn't struck
me before. It's all my fault."
"Whatever happens to Honor--_whatever happens to her_--and death
wouldn't be the worst thing, would it?--it's your fault. Do you hear
what I say? It's all your fault!" In all the years since he had known
him Jimsy had never seen Carter Van Meter like this,--cool Carter, with
his little elegancies of dress and manner, his studied detachment. This
was a different person altogether,--hot-eyed, white-lipped, snarling.
"Your fault if she dies here, dies of thirst; your fault if they get in
here and carry her off, those filthy brutes out there."
"They'll never ... get her," said Jimsy King. His face was scarlet and
he was breathing hard and clenching and unclenching his hands.
"Yes," Carter sneered, "yes! I know what you mean! You feel very heroic
about it. You feel like a hero in a movie, don't you? Noble of you,
isn't it? Slay the heroine with your own hands rather than let her----"
"Oh, for God's sake, Cart'!" Jimsy got up and came toward him. "Cut it
out! What's the good of talking like that? We're in it now, all of us,
and we've got to stick it out. I know it's harder on you because you're
not strong, but----"
"Damn you! 'Not strong--' Not built like an ox--muscles in my brain
instead of my legs! Because I cared for something else besides rolling
around in the mud with a leather ball in my arms----"
"Key down, old boy." Jimsy was cool now, unresentful; he understood.
Poor old Cart' ... he couldn't stand much suffering.
"That's how you got Honor, when she was a child, with no sense of
values, but you haven't held her! You can't hold her."
"Cart', I'm not going to get sore at you. I know you're about all in.
You don't know what you're saying."
"Don't I? Don't I? You listen to me. Honor Carmody never really loved
you; it was a silly boy-and-girl, calf love affair, and when she
realized it she stood by, of course,--she's that sort. She kept the
letter of her promise, but she couldn't keep the spirit."
"Key down, old top," said Jimsy King again, grinning. "I'm not going to
get sore, but I don't want to use up my breath laughing at you.
_Skipper_--going back on me!" He did laugh, ringingly.
"She hasn't gone back on you; except in her heart. Good God, Jimsy
King, what do you think you are to hold a girl like that--with her
talent and her success and her future? She's only stuck by you because
it was her creed, that's all."
"Look here, Cart', I'm not going to argue with you. It's not on the
square to Skipper even to talk about it, but don't be a crazy fool.
Would she have come to me here--from Italy, if she didn't----"
"Yes. Yes, she would! She's pledged to see it through--to stand by you
as all the other miserable women have stood by the men of your
family,--if you're cad enough to let her."
That caught and stuck. "If I'm--cad enough to let her," said Jimsy in a
curiously flat voice. But the mood passed in a flash. "It's no use
talking like that, Carter. Of course I know I'm not good enough or
brainy enough--or _anything_ enough for Skipper, but she thinks I am,
and----"
"You poor fool, she doesn't think so. I tell you she's only standing by
because she said she would. I tell you she cares for some one else."
"That's a lie," said Jimsy King with emphasis but without passion. The
statement was too grotesque for any feeling over it.
Carter stopped raving and snarling and became very cool and coherent.
"I think I can prove it to you," he said, quietly.
"You can't," said Jimsy, turning and walking toward the door.
"Are you afraid to listen?" He asked it very quietly.
"No," said Jimsy King, wheeling. "I'm not afraid. Go ahead. Get it off
your chest."
"Well, in the first place,--hasn't she kept you at arm's length here?
Hasn't she insisted on being with other people all the time,--on having
me with you?"
"Cart', I hate to say it, but that's because she's sorry for you."
"And for herself."
The murky dimness of the _sala_ was pressing in on Jimsy as it had on
the girl, that other day. He was worn with vigil and torn with thirst,
sick with dread of what might any moment come to them,--with remorse for
bringing Honor there, tormented with his helplessness to save her. Even
at his best he was no match for the other's cleverness and now he was in
the dust, blaming and hating himself. He stood there in silence,
listening, and Carter's hoarse voice, Carter's plausible words, went on
and on. "But I don't believe it," Jimsy would say at intervals. "She
doesn't care for you, Cart'. She's all mine, Skipper is. She doesn't
care for you."
"Wait!" Carter took out his wallet of limp leather with his initials on
it in delicately wrought gold letters and opened it. "I didn't mean to
show you this, but I see that I must. It was last summer. I--I lost my
head the night before we sailed, and let Honor see.... Then I asked
her.... I didn't say, 'Will you marry me?' because I knew there was no
hope of that so long as she thought there was a chance of saving you by
standing by you. I asked her--something else. And she sent me this wire
to the boat at Naples."
Jimsy did not put out his hand to take the slip of paper which Carter
unfolded and smoothed and held toward him. It was utterly still in the
_sala_ but from an upper room came the sound of Richard King's voice,
faint, thick, begging for water, and from somewhere in the distance a
muffled shot ... three shots.
Carter held the message up before Jimsy's eyes:
Carter Van Meter care Purser S. S. _Canopic Naples_
Yes.
HONOR.