They would not leave her alone. Carter came to stay with her and she
sent him away, and then Madeline King came, her very blue eyes red
rimmed and deep with understanding, but Honor could not talk with her
nor listen to her. She went away, shaking her head, and Josita came in
her place. Honor did not mind the little Mexican serving woman. She did
not try to talk to her. She just crouched on the floor at her feet and
prayers slipped from her tongue and her fingers:
_Padre Nuestra qui estás en los cielos--_
and presently:
_Santa Maria--_
Honor found herself listening a little scornfully. Was there indeed a
Father in the heavens or anywhere else who concerned Himself about
things like this? Josita seemed to think so. She was in terror, but she
was clinging to something ... somewhere.... Honor decided that she did
not mind the murmur of her voice; she could go on with her thinking just
the same. _Jimsy._ _Jimsy King_--Jimsy--"Wild"--King. What was she going
to do? What had she promised Stepper that day on the way to the train?
It all came back to her like a scene on the screen--the busy
streets--the feel of the wheel in her hands again--Stepper's slow
voice--"But, if the worst should be true, if the boy really has gone to
pieces, you won't marry him?" And her own words--"No; if Jimsy should
be--like his father--I wouldn't marry him, Stepper. There shouldn't be
any _more_ 'Wild Kings.'"
That was her promise to her stepfather, her best friend. But what had
been her promise to Jimsy, that day on the shore below the Malibou Ranch
when they sat in the little pocket of rocks and sand and sun, and he had
given her the ring with the clasped hands? Hadn't she said--"I do
believe you, Jimsy. I'll never stop believing you!" Yes, but how was she
to go on believing that he would not do the thing she saw him do? How
compass that? Her love and loyalty began to fling themselves against
that solid wall of ugly fact and to fall back, bruised, breathless.
Jimsy King of the hard muscles and wingèd heels, the essence of
strength and sunny power; Jimsy King, collapsed in the arms of Yaqui
Juan, failing her in the hour of her direst need. Jimsy, her lover, who
had promised her she should never go alive into those dark and terrible
hands ... Jimsy, who could not lift a finger now to defend her, or to
put her beyond their grasp. It became intolerable to sit still. She
sprang up and began to walk swiftly from wall to wall of the big room,
her heels tapping sharply on the smooth red tiles. Josita lifted
mournful eyes to stare at her for an instant and then returned to her
beads. Honor paused and looked out of the window. She could see nothing
through the inky blackness. Perhaps Yaqui Juan was creeping back to them
now, the canteens of precious water hung about his neck,--and perhaps he
was dead. There had been no shots, but they would not necessarily shoot
him. There were other ... awfuller ways. And Jimsy King was asleep. What
would he be like when he wakened, when he came to himself again? Could
he ever face her? Would he _live_?... And suppose she cast him
off,--then, what? She would go back to Italy, to the mountainous
_Signorina_. She would embrace her warmly and there would emanate from
her the faint odor of expensive soap and rare and costly scents, and
she would pat her with a puffy hand and say--"So, my good small one? The
sun has set, no? Ah, then, it does not signify whether one feel joy or
sorrow, so long as one feels. To feel ... that is to live, and to live
is to sing!" And she would go to work again, and sing in concert, and
take the place offered to her in the opera. And some day, when she went
for a holiday to Switzerland (she supposed she would still go on
holidays; people did, no matter what had happened to them) she would
meet Ethel Bruce-Drummond, hale and frank as the wind off the snow, and
she would say--"But where's your boy? I say, you haven't thrown him
over, have you?"
Well, could you throw over what fell away from you? Could you? She
realized that she was gripping the old ring with the thumb and fingers
of her right hand, literally "holding hard." Was this what James King
had meant? Had Jeanie King, Jimsy's firm-chinned Scotch mother who so
nearly saved her man, had she held on in times like this? Surely no
"Wild King" had ever failed his woman as Jimsy had failed her, in the
face of such hideous danger. But did that absolve her? After all (her
love and loyalty flung themselves again against the wall and it seemed
to give, to sway) _was_ it Jimsy who had failed her? Wasn't it the
taint in his blood, the dead hands reaching up out of the grave, the
cruel certainty that had hemmed him in all his days,--the bitter
man-made law that he must follow in the unsteady footsteps of his
forbears?
It wasn't Jimsy! Not _himself_; not the real boy, not the real man. It
was the pitiful counterpart of him. The real Jimsy was there,
underneath, buried for the moment,--buried forever unless she stood by!
(The wall was swaying now, giving way, crumbling.) Her pride in him was
gone, perhaps, and something of her triumphant faith, but her loyalty
was there and her love was there, bruised and battered and breathless;
not the rosy, untried, laughing love of that far-away day in the sand
and sun; a grave love, scarred, weary, argus-eyed. (The wall was down
now, a heap of stones and mortar.) She went upstairs to Jimsy's room and
knocked on the door. There was no answer. She knocked again, and after
an instant she tried to open it. It was locked, and she could not rouse
him, and a sense of bodily sickness overcame her for the moment.
Madeline King came out of her husband's room and hurried to her. "Ah, I
wouldn't, my dear," she said. "Wait until he--wait a little while." She
put her arm about her and pulled her gently away.
"I'll wait," said Honor in her rasping whisper. "I'll wait for him, no
matter how long it is."
The Englishwoman's eyes filled. "My dear!" she said. "Do you mind
sitting with Richard a few moments? I find it steadies me to move about
a bit."
"Of course I'll sit with him," said Honor, docilely, "but I'll always be
waiting for Jimsy." She sat down beside Richard King and took up the
fan.
"He's been better ever since that bit of water," said his wife,
thankfully. "And Juan will fetch us more! Good soul! If ever we come out
of this, Rich' must do something very splendid for him."
Carter went down into the _sala_. Honor had asked him to leave her, but
he found that he could not stay away from her; the remembrance of her
eyes when she looked at Jimsy was intolerable in the loneliness of his
own room. The big living room was empty but he supposed Honor would be
back presently, and he sat down in an easy chair and leaned his head
back and stared at the ceiling. He had arrived, very nearly, at the end
of his endurance. He knew it himself and he was husbanding his failing
strength as best he could. All his life, at times of illness or stress,
he had been subject to fainting fits; miraculously, in these dreadful
days, he had not fainted once, but now waves were rising about him,
almost submerging him. If the Indian came soon with the water ... if he
could once drink his fill ... if he could drink even a few drops ... he
could hold out. But the Indian had been gone for more than an hour, and
there was grave doubt of his ever coming back.
His eyes, skimming the ceiling, dropped to the shelves of books which
ran about the room and rose almost to meet it. They came to a startled
halt on a vase of ferns on a high shelf. A vase of ferns. There must
have been water in it. _Perhaps there was water in it now!_ He was so
weak that it was a tremendous effort for him to drag himself out of his
chair and across the room, to climb up on the book ladder and reach for
it. He grew so dizzy that it seemed as if he must drop it. He shook it.
_Water!_ He lifted out the ferns and looked. It was almost full. He
stood there with it in his hand, his eyes on the doors. He wanted with
all his heart to call Honor, to share it. His heart and his mind wanted
to call her, but his hands lifted the vase to his dry lips and he drank
in great gulps. He stopped himself before he was half satisfied. He was
equal to that. Then he put the ferns back in the vase and the vase back
on the shelf and went into the hall and called upstairs to her.
Honor came at once. "Oh, Carter, has Juan come?"
"No, not yet! But I think--I hope--I've made a discovery! Look!" He
pointed to the vase.
She caught her breath. "There might be water in it?"
"Yes, I'm sure there is." Again, more steadily this time, he mounted the
little sliding book ladder and reached for the vase, and Honor stood
watching him with wide eyes, her cracked lips parted.
"_Water?_" she whispered.
He nodded solemnly, shaking the tall vase for her to hear the heartening
sound of it. When he stood on the floor he held it toward her. "You
first, Honor."
"No." She was trembling. "We'll pour it out into a pitcher. If there's
enough to divide, we'll all have some. If there's just a little, we'll
give it to Mr. King." She went away, walking a little unsteadily,
putting out a hand here and there against the wall or the back of a
chair, and in a moment she came back with a tall glass pitcher.
"Careful, Cartie ... mustn't spill a drop...."
There was less than a cupful of dark, stale water, with bits of fern
fronds floating in it.
"Only enough for him," said Honor, her chin quivering. "Oh, Cartie, I'm
so thirsty ... so crazy thirsty...."
"You must take it yourself," said Carter, sternly. "Every drop." He held
the pitcher up to her.
Honor hesitated. "Cartie, I couldn't trust myself to drink it out of the
pitcher ... I'm afraid ... but I'll pour out about two teaspoonfuls for
each of us...." She poured an inch of water into a tiny glass. "You
first, Carter."
"No," said Carter, "I'm not going to touch it. It's for you and the
Kings."
"Carter! You're wonderful!" She drank her pitiful portion in three sips.
"There ... now you, please, Cartie! Just one swallow!"
But Carter shook his head. "No; I don't need it. Shall I take this to
Mrs. King?"
"Yes." Her sad eyes knighted him.
Carter took the pitcher of water to Mrs. King without touching a drop of
it and helped her to strain the fern bits out of it through a
handkerchief before she began to give it to her husband in spoonfuls.
With the first sip he ceased his uneasy murmuring and she smiled up at
the boy. "Thank you, Carter. It's very splendid of you. Won't you take a
sip for yourself?"
Carter said he did not need it.
"You do look fresher, really. You've stood this thing extraordinarily
well. Did you give Honor some?"
"She would take only a taste."
Madeline King's eyes filled. "This is a black night for her, Carter. The
thirst--and the _insurrectos_--are the least of it for Honor."
Carter's eyes were bleak. "But she had to know it some time. She had to
find it out, sooner or later. She couldn't have gone on with it, Mrs.
King."
She sighed. "I never was so astounded, so disappointed in all my life.
One simply cannot take it in. He has been so absolutely steady ever
since he came down,--and so fine all through this trouble! And to fail
us now, when we need him so,--with Honor in such danger--" She gave her
husband the last of the water and then laid on his forehead the damp
handkerchief through which she had strained it. "It will break his
uncle's heart. He was no end proud of him."
"She had to know it some time," said Carter, stubbornly. "Is there
anything I can do, Mrs. King?"
"Nothing, Carter."
"Then I'll go back to Honor."
Something in his expression, in the way his dry lips said it, made the
woman smile pityingly. "Carter, I--I'm frightfully sorry for you, too."
He drew himself up with something of the old concealing pride. "I'm
quite all right, thank you."
She was not rebuffed. "You are quite all wretched," she said, "you poor
lad, and I'm no end sorry, but--Carter, don't think this ill wind of
Jimsy's will blow you any good."
He flushed hotly through his strained pallor.
"Ah," said the Englishwoman, gently, "you were counting on it. It's no
good, Carter. It's no good. Not with Honor Carmody."
Carter did not answer her in words but there was angry denial in the
tilt of his head as he limped away, and she looked after him sadly.
He found Honor limply relaxed in a long wicker chair. "Carter," she
whispered, "I wish I'd asked you to give Jimsy a taste of that water."
"You think he deserves it?" He couldn't keep the sneer out of his voice.
"No," she answered him honestly. "I don't think he deserves it ... but
he needs it."
The words repeated themselves over and over in the other's mind. He
didn't deserve it, but he needed it. That was the way--the weak,
sentimental, womanish way in which she would reason it out about
herself, he supposed ... Jimsy King didn't deserve her, but he needed
her. He was deep in his bitter reflections when he realized that she
was speaking to him.
"Cartie, I must tell you how fine I think you are! You were splendid ...
about the water ... not taking any ... when I know how you're
suffering." She had to speak slowly, and if Stephen Lorimer had stood
out in the hall he would never have recognized his Top Step's voice. "Of
course we believe help is coming ... that we'll be safe in a few hours
... but because we may not be ... this is the time for telling the
truth, isn't it, Carter? I want to tell you ... how I respect you....
Once I said you were weak, when I was angry at you.... But now I know
you're strong ... stronger than--Jimsy ... with the best kind of
strength. I want you to know that I know that, Carty."
"_Honor_!" The truth and the lie spun round and round in his aching
head; he _was_ stronger than Jimsy King; he hadn't made a drunken beast
of himself; suppose he had taken the first sip of the water?--He hadn't
taken it all. He was a better man than Jimsy King. He made a swift
motion toward her, saying her name brokenly in his choked voice, but he
crumpled suddenly and slid from his chair to the floor and was still.
Honor flew to the foot of the stairs and called Mrs. King. "Carter has
fainted! Will you help me?"
Mrs. King called the Mexican guard in from the porch to lift him to the
couch, and she and the girl fanned him and chafed his thin wrists. When
he came to himself he was intensely chagrined. "I'm all right," he said
impatiently, sitting up. "I wish you wouldn't bother."
"Lie still for a bit," said Mrs. King. "You've had a nasty faint."
Honor saw his painful flush. "Cartie, it's no wonder you fainted,--I
feel as if I might, any minute. And I did nearly faint once, didn't I,
Mrs. King? The day I arrived here--remember?" She remembered all too
keenly herself ... the instant of relaxed blackness that followed on the
sound of Richard King's hearty voice--"Why, the boy's all right!
Ab-so-lutely all right! Isn't he, Madeline? Steady as a clock. That
college nonsense--" And the contrast between that day of faith
triumphant and this dark night was so sharp and cruel that she could not
talk any more, even to comfort Carter. They were all silent, so that
they clearly heard the unlocking, the opening, the closing of the door
of Jimsy's room, and then a step--a swift, sure step upon the stair.
Then Yaqui Juan walked into the _sala_.
"_Juan!_" They sprang at him, galvanized into life and vigor at the
sight of him. But he stood still, staring at them with a look of scorn
and dislike, his arms folded across his chest.
"_Juan_," Mrs. King faltered,--"_no agua_?" It was incredible. He was
back, safely back, untouched, not even breathing hard. Where was the
water he had risked his life to bring them? The Englishwoman began to
cry, childishly, whimpering. "I can't bear it ... I can't bear it ... I
wanted it for Rich' ... for Rich'!"
The Indian did not speak, but his scornful, accusing eyes, raking them
all, came to rest on Honor, fixing her with pitiless intensity.
The girl was shaking so that she could hardly stand; she caught hold of
the back of a tall chair to steady herself. "Juan,--you came out of
Señor Don Diego's room?" she whispered.
"_Si, Señorita._" He was watching the dawning light in her face, but the
sternness of his own did not soften.
"You didn't go at all," wept Mrs. King, rocking to and fro and wringing
her hands. "You didn't go at all!"
"_No, Señora._"
Honor Carmody screamed, a hoarse, exultant shout. It was as she had
screamed in the old good days when Jimsy King, the ball clutched to his
side, tore down the field and went over the line for a touchdown. "Jimsy
went! Jimsy went! _Jimsy went!_ It was Jimsy! _Jimsy!_" She flung her
arms over her head, swaying unsteadily on her feet. Tears streamed from
her eyes and ran down over her white cheeks and into her parched mouth.
In that instant there was room for no fear, no terror; they would come
later, frantic, unbearable. Now there was only pride, pride and faith
and clean joy. "Jimsy! _Jimsy!_" Her legs gave way beneath her and she
slipped to the floor, but she did not cease her hoarse and pitiful
shouting.
"How could he?" said Carter Van Meter. "It was impossible--in that
condition! Honor, he couldn't----"
But Yaqui Juan strode to the little table where the empty decanter
stood, stooped, picked up a rough jug of decorative Mexican pottery from
an under shelf. Then, pausing until he saw that all their eyes were upon
him, he slowly poured its contents back into the decanter. The liquor
rose and rose until it reached the exact spot which Carter had pointed
out to Honor--the top of the design engraved on the glass. "_Mira_!"
said the Indian, sternly.
"_God_," said Carter Van Meter.
"He was acting! He was acting!" wept Mrs. King.
But Jimsy's Skipper sat on the floor, waving her arms, swaying her body
like a yell leader, still shouting his name in her cracked voice, and
then, crazily, her eyes wide as if she visualized a field, far away, a
game, a gallant figure speeding to victory, she sang:
_You can't beat L. A. High!_
_You can't beat L. A. High!_
_Use your team to get up steam_
_But you cant beat L. A. High!_