CHAPTER XXXII

Neither followed him, and Stephen did not even call after him “not to

linger in the hall, running the risk of being seen,” but turned at once

to Helen, who sat brooding and puzzled.

“Helen,” Pryde said earnestly, “you must help me persuade him to go at

once.”

“I can’t do that, Stephen,” the girl replied slowly.

“But it’s madness for him to stay here.”

“I’m not so sure of that,” Helen said, shaking her head. “I have the

same feeling that he has—exactly the same feeling.”

“Helen, be sensible!” he begged roughly. “Look things in the face! What

evidence could there be here that would help you?”

“I can’t answer that,” she replied musingly, “at least not yet. All I

know is that this is our one chance.”

“Our one chance?”

“Yes—Hugh’s and mine.”

Stephen Pryde winced. Hers and Hugh’s! They two linked by her, and

always. “Yours and Hugh’s,” he said acidly. “Yes, but, Helen, aren’t you

forgetting?”

“Forgetting what?”

“Your father’s wishes.”

“Oh,” she returned impatiently, “that was when he believed Hugh guilty;

if he proves his innocence——”

“He hasn’t proved it yet,” Stephen broke in viciously.

“But he will,” she said firmly. “Stephen, I am sure he will. You—you

wouldn’t wish to stand between us then?”

“Don’t you understand, Helen,” Pryde retorted, “that this is just what

your father wanted to save you from? He realized that, if you ever came

under Hugh’s influence again, he would make you believe in him.”

“Then you don’t believe in him?” She spoke coldly, and she was fully

alert now.

“God knows I wish I could.”

“Stephen!” she cried, rising indignantly, recoiling from him in

amazement.

“But I can’t,” Pryde added doggedly. He was furious now.

“Well, I can and do,” the girl said icily. “And I am going to stand by

him, no matter what happens. I know he is innocent. But if he were

guilty, a thousand times guilty, it would make no difference to me, none

at all in my love. I’d only care for him the more, stand by him the

more, and for ever and ever.”

The fierce color rushed to Pryde’s face, and his hands knotted together

in pain.

“Helen,” he pled, “you are making things very difficult for me.”

“I am sorry, Stephen,” she said a little perfunctorily; “but I love

Hugh,” she added proudly. “He is all I have in the world.”

“You don’t understand,” he retorted sternly. “I promised your father to

take care of you. I mean to keep that promise.”

“No, I do not understand,” Helen said haughtily. She, too, was

infuriated now.

“You must send Hugh away at once,” Stephen told her abruptly.

“Must? Do you think to force me to do as you wish?”

“Yes.”

She had spoken insolently, and he was white to his lips. He loved her,

all his life he had loved her; and she knew it. An older woman would

have spared him a little, because of that love, because of his pain.

Helen hit him again. She went a step nearer, and laughed in his face—a

taunting laugh of scorn and dislike.

There was a bitter pause, and then Stephen spoke more carefully, groping

to retrieve somewhat the ground his passion had lost.

“You don’t seem to realize that Hugh is in a very dangerous position.

If—if some one should inform the authorities of his whereabouts——”

“Inform the authorities?” she repeated his words wonderingly. He had not

meant to say them, and already regretted them. He bit his lip. Suddenly

their meaning dawned on her.

“Stephen,” her voice was stiff with horror, horror of him, not fear for

Hugh. “You wouldn’t do that?”

“I!” he said thickly. “I—no—no—no.”

“I’d hate you, if you did that,” Helen said quietly. Pryde realized how

much too far he had gone. He owed his place in the world to this girl’s

favor, his hope, still ardent, to fulfill the dreams he had dreamt as a

boy, watching the birds; he could not afford to incur her enmity. If

love was lost, ambition remained. Fool, fool that he was to imperil that

too. He changed his tone, and said shiftily—

“No—no—you misunderstand me—of course I wouldn’t.”

“It would disgrace Hugh,” she persisted hotly; “ruin his whole life,

just when he has fought his way up again.”

“But don’t you see,” Stephen urged eagerly, taking quick advantage of

the opening her words gave, “that is just what I am trying to prevent?

If he is caught, he is certain to be disgraced. The whole truth about

the theft would have to come out. That is why I want him to go from here

quickly. It’s for his sake—to save him. I’m thinking of him, only of

him.”

At the word “theft,” Helen threw her head up haughtily. But Stephen

Pryde was almost past picking his words now. On the whole, though, he

was playing his part well, his cards shrewdly. His last words rang true,

whatever they in fact were; and Helen was not unimpressed. Incredible as

it may seem, Pryde’s affection for his brother was not dead, and at

sight of Hugh, for all the dilemma with which Hugh’s reappearance

threatened him, that old-time affection had leapt in the older man’s

guilt-heavy heart. And it was that, probably, that had given some warmth

of truth to his last words, some semblance of conviction to Helen.

But she stood her ground. “He can’t go—until he has made his search,”

she said with quiet finality. “His only chance of proving his innocence

is through that.”

“But that’s absurd,” Pryde disputed impatiently. “What evidence could he

find here?”

“I don’t know yet,” Helen admitted. “But I am sure there is something.”

“Sure? Why are you so sure?” He spoke eagerly, all his uneasiness

rekindled at her confident words, the poor thief in him fearing each

syllable an officer.

His cousin thought a little, and then she answered him, and more kindly.

“Stephen, I haven’t been quite frank with you, because I know you don’t

believe what I believe, but I must tell you the truth now.”

“Well?” he said breathlessly.

“Hugh and I have both had a message from Daddy, telling us that the

proof that would clear him is in this room.”

“A message—a message from your father?” His agitation was increasing,

but he did his utmost to conquer it.

“Yes,” Helen replied gravely.

“He left you—he left you letters?” Pryde’s voice was thick with terror.

Few as his words were, he spoke them with difficulty.

“No!” Helen shook her head.

“Then how”—his voice trembled and so did his hands—“how did the

message come?”

“It only came lately—from the other side.”

“From the other side?” Stephen asked blankly.

Helen nodded. For a moment he looked at her in utter perplexity, and

then a light broke faintly.

“Oh!” he said incredulously. “You—you mean the messages came from a

dead man?”

“Yes,” Helen said assuredly.

Pryde’s relief was so great that he could scarcely control it or

himself. He felt faint and sick with elation, and presently he broke

into hysterical laughter. It was the second time he had laughed so in

this room.

Helen regarded him offendedly. Indeed, feeling as she felt, and at stake

what she had at stake, his mirth was offensive. But the boisterous

merriment was his safety-valve.

When he was able to check himself, and he did as soon as he could, he

said, more affectionately than superiorly,

“Helen, surely you can’t be serious?”

“I am,” she answered curtly. She was indignant.

“But,” Stephen persisted, “you can’t believe such preposterous nonsense.

A message from the dead! It’s too absurd!”

“You will see that it is not,” the girl told him coldly.

“I shall have to wait a long time for that, I am afraid,” he returned

patronizingly. He was quite himself now. He rose carelessly and strolled

to the writing-table. But as he went the menace that still threatened

him reasserted itself in his mind. He turned again to Helen. “And this

message from the dead, as you call it, is your only reason for believing

that there was some evidence in this room that would clear Hugh?”

“Yes.” She vouchsafed the word inimically.

Pryde drew a long breath of relief, and turned from her vexed face. As

he turned, his eye fell again on the writing-table and traveled, as

before, from it to the fireplace. He stood musing, and presently,

scarcely conscious of what he was saying, said—

“And for a time you quite impressed me. I thought you had found out

about——” He broke off abruptly, realizing with a frightened start that

he had been on the verge of a damning admission. His great relief had

weakened his masterly defense—made him careless.

Helen regarded him curiously. “About what?” she said.

“Why, about—about this evidence,” he replied, laughing lightly. He was

well on his guard again.

“Don’t make fun of me, Stephen,” she said, rising. “You hurt me.”

“I’m sorry,” he said earnestly. “I didn’t mean to do that. Where are you

going?” he added, as she reached the door.

“I am going to Hugh,” she said quietly, without halting or looking

toward him. And he neither dared stay her nor follow her.

Alone in the fateful room, Stephen Pryde moved about it restlessly.

He lit a cigarette, but after a few whiffs he tossed it to the fire.

Suddenly he looked apprehensively over his shoulder. He was shivering

with cold. He walked about uncomfortably. “A message from the dead,” he

said aloud, contempt, amusement, and dread blended in his voice. “A

message from the dead.” He went hurriedly to the side table where the

decanters stood and mixed himself a drink. He carried his glass to the

fireplace, as if for warmth, and drank, looking down at the flames.

Suddenly he swung round with a cry of horror. “Uncle Dick!” The thin

glass fell and shivered into a dozen fragments on the hearth. “Who’s

there?” he cried, twitching convulsively. “Who’s there?” And with a

distraught moan, he sank cowering into the chair from which Richard

Bransby had risen to die.

* * * * *

BOOK IV

THE LIGHT

CHAPTER XXXIII

The wretched man sat helpless in the grip of his terror. Cold puffs of

air buffeted his trembling face. A hand of ice lay on his forehead.

Afraid of what he almost saw dimly, and clearly sensed now, he hid his

face in his hands and waited, unable to move, except as his own abject

fear shook him, unable to call for help. And he would have welcomed any

human help now—any human companionship.

But such wills as Stephen Pryde’s are neither conquered nor broken by

one defeat. Presently he took down his hands, and the uncovered face was

again the face of a man.

He was calmer now, and with his wonderful will and the habits of thought

of a lifetime he was overcoming his fear. He looked about the big room

quickly, shrugged his shoulders, and laughed slightly—a rather

mirthless laugh of self-contempt. He got up in another moment, and moved

about steadily, turning on the electric lights. Again he laughed as he

stood warming his hands before the glow of the gas fire. Clearly he was

ashamed of himself for having permitted his nerves to get the better of

him and of his commonsense. Yet the quick, stealthy glances he could not

refrain from throwing over his shoulder now and then, and an odd

apprehensiveness in his bearing, proved that there was still some doubt

in his mind—a doubt and a fear of which he could not rid

himself—absolutely.

He was still wandering aimlessly about the room when his tired eyes fell

on the writing-table. It suggested the missing paper to him again, of

course: it always would, whenever he saw it. He went close to the table,

dragged there, as it were, and, as they had done before again and again,

his eyes traveled to the fire. A thought flashed to his troubled mind.

He went eagerly to the fireplace, and kneeling down searched feverishly

for some charred fragments of the paper that so threatened him. Nothing

could have shown more clearly how unhinged he was. A paper burnt eight

months ago would scarcely be traceable, by even one atom, near a fire

that had been burning constantly since Helen’s return some days ago, or

in a fireplace, or on a hearthrug, that Caroline Leavitt most certainly

had had thoroughly cleaned each day since the partial removal of Helen’s

taboo had made such cleanly housewifery possible. It had been a crazed

thought, bred in an overwrought mind. Often acute mania discloses itself

in just some such small irregularity of conduct.

Of course, he found nothing where there could be nothing to find. But it

unsettled him again greatly. He rose from his knees and stood a long

time deeply troubled, staring vacantly into space.

Presently he looked quickly behind him, but not this time with the

nervous tremor of the ghost-ridden, but rather with the trained, skilled

investigation of the steel-nerved housebreaker, the quick movement of

one who wishes to make sure he is unobserved.

“Afraid of a dead man!” He laughed at the very thought. But the

living—ah, that was very much another matter. He was afraid of the

living, deadly afraid of his own brother—of poor hunted Hugh—of a slip

of a girl, and of every breathing creature that might find, through

search or by accident, and disclose, the incriminating document. For it,

murder had been in his heart, in the hour he had written it. And because

of it, something akin to murder throbbed and sickened in him now.

He looked about the room again and again for some possible hiding-place.

Then all at once he looked at the door through which Hugh had gone, and

his face grew livid and terrible. Hugh _must_ go. He must not, he should

not, search this room and its hideous possibilities again. He must go:

he should. If only the boy’d go and go into safety! How gladly he,

Stephen, would aid him, and provide for him too. But, if Hugh would not

go in that way, why, then he should go in another. Pryde had taken his

resolve. He would not waver now.

He rang the bell, and moved to the table, and stood looking down on the

notepaper there.

“You rung, sir?” Barker asked.

“Yes. There’s a camp near here, I believe?”

“Just over the hill, sir.”

“Simmons the gardener still lives in the cottage?”

“Yes, sir.” The girl glowed, and was almost inarticulate with eagerness.

“But, sir, if you want some one to go over to the camp, sir——”

“That will do,” Pryde told her curtly.

“Very—very good, sir,” she almost sobbed it, and slunk out,

disappointed and abashed.

Stephen watched her go impatiently, and then turned back to the table,

his face tense and set. He picked up a piece of paper, sat down, dipped

a pen in the ink—and then laid the pen down, remembering what had, in

all probability, been last written at that table, with ink from this

well—perhaps with this penholder! The nib was new, and careful “Aunt

Caroline” had had the inkstand cleaned and filled. Stephen sighed and

took up the pen. Then he frowned—at the embossed address at the head of

the sheet. He tore it off, looked at the waste-paper basket, then at the

fire, but neither seemed quite safe enough to share this latest secret

of his penmanship. He put the torn-off engraved bit of paper carefully

in his pocket, and began to write very slowly, with wonderful care.

The writing was not his own. Versatility in hand-writings had always

been the greatest deftness of his versatile hands. “Hugh Pryde, wanted

for desertion, is in hiding at Deep Dale. A Friend.” He wrote it

relentlessly, his lip curving in scorn at the threadbare pseudonym. Then

he gave a long look up at Helen’s portrait still radiant over the

mantel. Then a thought of Hugh, and of the boyhood days they had shared,

came to him chokingly. He propped his head in his hands, and sat and

gazed ruefully at the treachery he had just written. So absorbed was he

in his sorry scrutiny that he did not hear a step in the hall, and he

jumped a little, woman-like, when his cousin closed the door behind her.

With a quick, stealthy movement he folded the sheet of paper and thrust

it into his coat “Oh, Helen, it’s you!” he said rather jerkily.

“Hugh is growing very impatient, Stephen,” she said, coming nearer;

“will you go to him now?”

“Yes—yes—of course. I was just going. There’s no time to lose; none. I

hope he has grown more reasonable.”

“How do you mean?” Helen spoke sharply.

“About leaving here, of course.” His voice was as sharp.

“We both know that he can’t do that yet,” she returned decidedly—“not

until——”

Stephen came to her imperiously. “Helen, it’s folly for him to stay.”

“No,” she retorted hotly. “For I am sure, quite sure, we are going to

find the proofs we want—and it is only here we can look for them.”

“But if you don’t find them?” he reminded her.

“We will.”

“You haven’t yet,” Stephen told her impatiently.

“In just a little while the way will come to us,” the girl said. “I am

sure it will.”

“Yes, I’m sure it will,” her cousin said mendaciously. “But in the

meantime the men are searching for Hugh. And, if he doesn’t leave at

once, I feel certain they will come here and arrest him. I’m going to

him now, to try to persuade him once more to be reasonable.” And he went

from the library, his anonymous note in his pocket. Helen made no

attempt to dissuade him. His words had troubled her deeply. Ought Hugh

indeed to go? She couldn’t say. She could scarcely think.

CHAPTER XXXIV

She looked in the fire. She counted the clock’s ticking. She gazed at

the Joss. What should she do? She asked them all that. What ought Hugh

to do? They gave her no answer, no help. She rang the bell, and sank

dejectedly into her father’s chair. “Do you know where Dr. Latham is?”

she asked Barker when the girl came.

“No, Miss.”

“Find him. Tell him I want him—here, at once.”

It seemed an unconscionable time to her that she waited. But it was not

long, as the clock told it. Barker had been quick for once.

“Dr. Latham, you must help me, you must help me now,” Helen cried

excitedly as he came in.

At the sight of her face Latham turned back and closed the door

carefully. Then he came to her.

“Help you—something has happened?”

“Yes. And that feeling I spoke of—that sense of nearness—has come back

to me.”

The physician drew a chair close to hers. “You must put this out of your

mind,” he told her pityingly.

She turned to him imploringly. “How can I? Daddy is speaking to me, he

is trying to help me; and isn’t it terrible I can’t hear?—I can’t

hear.”

“My dear child——”

“Oh, I know, you think I am nervous, overwrought—well, perhaps I am,”

she said, rising and going to him, laying her hand on his chair’s high

back, “but don’t you see the only way I can get any relief is to find

out what Daddy wants to tell me?—Think how he must be suffering when he

is trying so hard to speak to me, and I can’t hear—I can’t hear.”

Latham made a gesture of sympathy and disbelief mingled, and laid his

hand on hers, rising. “Oh, if you knew the circumstances you would help

me, I know you would.”

Her voice was wild, but her eyes were clear and sane, and something in

their steady light gave him pause—almost touched him with conviction.

He was skilled at distinguishing truth from untruth, sanity from

hallucination: that was no small part of his fine professional

equipment. He studied her steadily, and then said gravely—

“What are the circumstances?”

“I know I can trust you.”

Latham smiled. “Of course.”

“Hugh has come back.”

“No?” Great physicians are rarely surprised. Horace Latham was very much

surprised.

“He came this afternoon. Dr. Latham, he didn’t desert. Daddy told him he

must give up his commission—he promised Hugh that he would arrange it;

he must have died before he had the chance, but Hugh never knew. He

enlisted under another name.”

Angela had always said that Hugh Pryde had done nothing shabby. She knew

that. There was some explanation. Latham remembered it. Clever woman!

“But,” he said, “why did your father——”

“He thought Hugh had taken some money from the office,” Helen rushed on

breathlessly. “The evidence was all against him; but he was innocent,

Dr. Latham.” Latham’s face was non-committal, but he bowed his head

gravely. “I know he was innocent,” the girl insisted, “and Daddy knows

it now. Oh, Dr. Latham, can’t you help me?” She laid her little hands on

his arm, and her tearful eyes pled with him eloquently.

Latham was moved. “My dear, how can I?” he said very gently.

“You don’t realize how vital this is,” she urged, “The authorities

suspect Hugh’s whereabouts; they were at the office to-day, looking for

him. If they find him before he can clear himself——”

“Yes——” Latham saw clearly the gravity of that. But _what_ could he

do? “Yes?”

“Don’t you see now that I must find out what Daddy wants to tell me?”

Latham was badly troubled. Hugh _might_ be innocent, but the chances

were the other way. Angela was the most charming creature in all the

universe. Helen was very charming. But their added convictions were no

evidence in a court of law, and not much before the tribunal of his own

masculine judgment.

“Miss Bransby,” he told the trembling girl sadly, “if I could help you

to understand, I would; but I—I—don’t know the way.”

“But you believe there is a way?” Helen said, eagerly. Even that much

from his lips would be something. Every one knew Dr. Latham was wise and

thoughtful and careful. “You do believe there is a way?” she repeated

wistfully.

“Perhaps.” He spoke almost as wistfully as she had. “If one could only

find it; but so many unhappy people have tried to stretch a hand across

that gulf, and so few have succeeded—and even when they have—most of

the messages that have come to them have been either frivolous or beyond

our understanding.”

“But we shall find the way—we shall find it,” Helen told him

positively.

“Well,” Latham said, begging the psychic question—putting it aside for

the more material quandary, “somehow we will find a way to get Hugh out

of this difficulty. Where is he now?”

“With Stephen,” Helen told him.

“Stephen—Stephen’s the very man to help us,” Latham said cheerfully.

Helen felt perfectly sure that Stephen might be bettered for the work in

hand, but she had no time to say so, even if she would, for at that

moment Mrs. Hilary ran through the door, opening it abruptly, and

closing it with a clatter.

“Oh! Helen,” she cried—and then she saw Latham, and paused

disconcerted.

“He knows all about Hugh, Angela,” Helen said.

“Thank goodness! Now perhaps we shan’t be long! Something dreadful has

happened. My chauffeur has just brought me a note. The detectives have

found out that Hugh has been at my house. Two detectives are waiting

there now to question me. They may be here any moment. Thank goodness

Palmer had the sense to send me word. But, what shall we do? They may be

here any moment, I tell you.”

“Yes,” Latham said, “unless they have been here already.” He went to the

bell and rang it. Why he rang he did not say. And neither of the women

asked him, only too content, as all but the silliest women, or the

bitterest, are, to throw the responsibility of immediate practical

action in such dilemmas on to a man they trusted. The three waited in

silence until Barker said—

“You rang, miss?”

“I rang, Barker,” Latham answered. “Has any one been here lately asking

for Mr. Hugh?”

“Yes, sir. This afternoon, sir.”

“This afternoon!” Helen cried in dismay.

“Yes, miss, about an hour ago, two men come—came.”

“What did you tell them?” Latham asked quickly. “I told them the truth,

sir, of course, as I ’adn’t never been told to tell them anything else,

that he has never been here, not once since the master died.”

“Quite right,” Latham said cordially. “And, Barker, if they should

happen to come back, let me know at once, and I’ll speak to them.”

“Very good, sir.”

“And—Barker, did they see any one but you?”

“No, sir.”

“You are sure?”

“Oh yes, sir. I stood at the hall window and watched them until the road

turned, and I couldn’t see them no more.”

“They will come back,” Helen almost sobbed as the door closed behind

Barker.

“When they come back Hugh will not be here,” Latham told her

confidently.

“Then you are going to help us?”

“Of course.” Latham smiled at her. In all his years of conventional

rectitude, he had never defied the law of his land; and he fully

realized the heinousness of aiding a deserter soldier to escape

arrest—and in war time too—and its possible consequences. But he was

staunch in friendship, he was greatly sorry for Helen, be the merits of

Hugh’s case what they might, and he knew that Angela’s eye was on him.

And this thing he could do. To raise the dead to the girl’s aid he had

no necromancy, but to smuggle Hugh away he might easily compass, if no

more time were lost. “Of course,” he repeated. “I must. Go and tell Hugh

to come here as quickly as he can.”

“Yes,” Helen said eagerly. “Oh, thank you, Doctor.”

“That’s all right,” he said cheerfully.

Helen hurried away. Latham held out his hand, and Angela came to him and

put hers in it. She asked him no question, and for a space he stood

thinking.

“Now, dear,” he said in a moment.

“Yes,” she said eagerly.

“You must go at once.”

“I know—but where can I go?”

“Home.”

“Home!” She echoed his word in consternation.

“Yes, go back as if nothing had happened.” He put his arm about her and

led her towards the door.

“As if nothing had happened?” she said feebly.

“Keep those men there until we have a chance to get Hugh safely away.”

“Oh——” she cried in a panic. “Oh—I couldn’t.”

“You must.” If “must” is the one word no woman forgives any man

ordinarily, it can on the other hand be the sweetest she ever hears—at

the right moment, from the right man. Angela accepted it meekly, and

proudly too. “But what can I say to them?” she begged.

“Oh, say—anything, anything.”

“But, Horace, what does one say to detectives?”

“You can say whatever comes into your head,” he replied, smiling into

her eyes. “After all they are only men.”

Angela dimpled. “Yes—so they are—just men. I dare say I can manage.”

“I dare say you can,” Horace Latham retorted dryly.

CHAPTER XXXV

“Hugh will be down directly,” Helen told Latham as she came in, a moment

after Mrs. Hilary had gone.

“Good. I will take him away in my car, and find some place where he can

stay safely until we can get at the truth of this.”

“Ah, that is good of you,” Helen thanked him.

“Remember,” Latham reminded her gravely, “sooner or later Hugh must give

himself up.”

“He knows that,” Helen said bravely.

“I drive my own car now,” the doctor said briskly, “so we can start at

once. Be sure he’s ready.”

“Oh, yes,” she said.

“Then I’ll get the car and bring it round,” he said over his shoulder as

he went.

She scarcely heard his last words, or realized that he had gone. She

stood very still, one hand on the table—one on her breast. There was

something trance-like in the tense, slender figure. Her wide eyes

glazed. Her breath came in slow, heavy beats. Presently she gave a great

sigh, lifted her hand from her breast to her head, then moved slowly

towards the bookcase, her hand stretched out in front of her now, as if

leading and pointing. She moved mechanically, as sleep walkers move, and

almost as if impelled from behind. Her face was still and mask-like.

She had almost reached the bookshelves, almost touched with her outheld

hand “David Copperfield,” when Stephen came into the room. Instantly

something odd and uncanny in her manner arrested him. For one moment he

stood riveted, spell-bound, then he shook off furiously the influence

that held him, and exclaimed abruptly, peremptorily, “Helen! Helen!”

His voice broke the spell, and she turned to him blankly, like one who

had but just awakened from heavy sleep. A moment she gazed at him

unseeingly; then she moaned and tottered. She would have fallen, but

Stephen caught her and held her. The spell, the faintness, whatever it

was, passed or changed, and she moved slowly from his hold, greatly

excited, but conscious, and more nearly normal; the rapt look on her

face still, but penetrated more and more by her own personality, awake

and normally sentient.

All at once she realized. In one flash of time, one great beat of

emotion, _she saw_.

“Stephen!” she panted.

“What is it?” Pryde said, guiding her to a chair, and urging her into it

gently.

“Stephen,” she repeated, both palms pressed on her forehead. “Oh!”

“What is the matter?” he asked hoarsely, dazed and perturbed.

“Just now—when you spoke”; her voice gathered tone as she continued,

grew bell-clear, ringing, flute-fine, “the message was coming—it almost

got through, it almost got through! Something was telling me what to do

to save Hugh.”

Her eyes glowed like deep blue lamps, around her face a veil of

transparent lambent whiteness clung, and transfigured it. The girl was

in ecstasy.

Stephen Pryde was terribly shaken. He looked at Helen in fear and

amazement. Then, unable to refrain, though he tried his strongest, he

looked over his shoulder uneasily. When he could speak his voice was

harsh and unnatural.

“Impossible,” he said roughly; “impossible.”

“No, no,” the girl whispered exultantly, clearly. “_I know_—I can’t

tell you anything, but that I know, I know, I know.”

There was a power in the girl-voice that reached and subdued Stephen. He

was impressed, almost convinced.

“You know,” he said slowly, wonderingly. “Did this message—did it

indicate some paper—tell you where to look for it?” For his soul, for

his life, for his whole future at stake, he could not keep the words

back. They were forced from him, as the hand of the player plucks the

melody from a harp—the melody, or the discord. Something stronger than

he ever had been, or ever could be, commanded and he obeyed, bowed to

the infinite; his own conscience turned traitor and linked against him,

linked with some nameless mightiness he had scoffed at and denied and

defied.

“Paper?” Helen said. “What paper do you mean?”

He rushed on, goaded and driven. “I don’t know—only if there were some

evidence here that would clear Hugh, it would be in the shape of a paper

that—that——” His tongue clove thick in his mouth, clotted and mumbled

with nervousness. He could scarcely enunciate; he could not enunciate

clearly—“that seems reasonable, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, of course,” Helen agreed. “No—nothing of that sort came to

me—the whole thing was so vague—so indistinct. But I am sure now; it

will come back to me—and help me—I am sure it will.” The glow on her

face, the great light in her eyes, grew brighter and brighter.

Stephen Pryde was almost in the state he had been in when he had dropped

his glass on the fender and cried, “Who’s there? Uncle Dick!” While

Helen spoke he kept looking over his shoulder. He was tremblingly

conscious of a _something_ in the room, a something that he felt was a

some one—a presence. It almost overpowered him, the conviction, the

chill, and the unprecedented sensation, but, summoning his iron will, he

resolved to fight on; and with a flash of chicanery that was nothing

short of genius, and nothing less than satanic, he determined even to

take advantage of the dead man’s message. For it had come to that with

him now. That Richard Bransby was in the room, and trying “to

communicate,” he now no more doubted than Helen herself did. Well! let

it be so. Let the dead man get the message through, if he could! He—he,

Stephen—would take it, twist it, turn it, use it, seize it—_destroy_

it, if need were. He had defied God and His angels, his own conscience,

fate, the law of the land, and now he defied the soul and the

consciousness and all the craft of one old man dead—dead and returned.

He turned to Helen impressively. “If—if it would only come to you now.”

“What?” the girl said uncomprehendingly.

“If I could find whatever it is—if you would help me to find it,” he

insinuated earnestly.

“How can I?” she faltered.

“Try,” he urged masterfully—“try and get that message again.” His hands

were so cold they ached. Sweat ran on his brow. But his voice was firm,

his eyes imperative, compelling.

“I can’t,” Helen said piteously.

“You must, I tell you, you must.” He stamped his foot in his insistence.

“Stephen, you frighten me,” she said, shrinking.

“Try, Helen, try.” He whispered it gently, soothingly.

Like some beautiful, breathing marionette, she rose slowly, very slowly,

pressed one hand over her eyes—stood rigid, but swaying, poised for

motion, tuned for revelation—for receiving and transmitting a message.

Stephen Pryde watched her with straining eyes. His gasping breath froze

on his stiffening lips. He put out one daring hand, and just touched her

sleeve. At that touch some negative current seemed to sweep and surge

through her. She recoiled, she shuddered, and then she relaxed from all

her intensity, and sank wearily down into the nearest chair, saying

dully—

“I can’t Stephen, I can’t!”

The banished blood leapt back to his face, and laughed in his heart,

danced through his veins. His whole attitude was changed in one flash of

time; the attitude of his flesh, the attitude of his mind. Helen had

failed. The thing she had hoped, he had feared and defied, could not be

done. It was farce. It was fraud—fraud worked on them by their caitiff

nerves, as “fortunes” forsooth were told for a “bob” by old crones, from

tea leaves—on the Brixton Road. And almost he had been persuaded, he,

Stephen Pryde! Pshaw! Well, his fears were done for and past now once

for all. The dead man could not reach her! The dead man; a handful of

dust or of rot in a grave!

He turned to Helen in cold triumph. “I knew it—I knew it,” he exulted.

“Don’t you see now, Helen, how you are deceiving yourself? If there was

a message for you, why shouldn’t it come? I tried to help you—to put

myself in sympathy—you saw how useless it was.”

But Helen had been too near the unseen, too far across the dread

borderland. Doubt could not touch her again. She had stood in the edge

of the light. She had felt. Almost she had heard and had seen. She knew.

She shook her head, without troubling to answer him or look toward him.

She shook her head and she smiled.

“Where’s Latham?” Pryde said in a brisk, matter-of-fact tone.

She answered him as crisply, and as commonplace in manner and word.

“He is going to take poor Hugh away in his car; he has gone to get it

ready.”

“Oh!”

“He is going to take him to some place where he will be safe until we

can find the evidence that will clear him.”

“But there isn’t any,” Pryde said with truculent brutality; and his eyes

measured yet again, gloatingly, the distance and the angle from the

writing-table to the fireplace.

“I know there is,” Helen said quietly.

“There can’t be,” Stephen stormed, almost losing grip of himself—very

nearly had he reached his breaking-point. “I tell you, there can’t be.”

Helen sat and studied her cousin curiously. She was not a thoughtful

girl, and the abnormal strains through which she had been passing for

some time now had conspired to make thought peculiarly difficult; but

there was much in Stephen’s manner, in what he said and in how he said

it, in his face, his eyes, his gestures, his inconsistencies, to compel

thought and arouse suspicion, even in a mind as tired and as little

given to analysis as hers was.

She was on his track now, not in the least knowing or surmising what was

hidden in his soul, but sensing that there was something, something that

it behooved her, for Hugh’s sake, to fathom. Whether she might have

fathomed it, as she sat watching him with troubled, doubting eyes, would

be difficult to guess. And in a few moments her detective train of

thought was broken by Hugh’s voice. He came in gravely but cheerfully,

and said, as he stood smiling down on her tenderly—

“Here I am, Helen.”

She smiled back at him, little minded to show less courage than her man

did in this climax moment of their ordeal.

“Doctor Latham will be here in a minute; he’s going to take you away in

his car,” she said as cheerfully as Hugh himself had spoken, and rising

and linking her arm in his.

“But I can’t go, Helen,” Hugh told her,—“not yet—it wouldn’t be right

for me to go until I have searched this room—I—why, if I turn towards

the door even, something _pushes_ me back. I mustn’t go, dear; I must

search first. It won’t take long—I can do it before they get here.”

Stephen came to his brother, and laid his hands on Hugh’s shoulders. As

Stephen came towards them, Helen drew a little away.

“No,” Stephen said earnestly, “no; why not go with Latham now, and then,

come back—when it is safe?”

Hugh wavered. This elder brother had always influenced him much. They

had been orphans together, and in their early orphaned days, the elder

had been something of father and mother too to Hugh Pryde. Stephen’s

earliest recollection was of their mother; Hugh’s earliest was of

Stephen, mending a broken toy for him, and comforting him with a silver

threepence. A thousand times Stephen had befriended him. Stephen was

proved wise, again and again, and kind and disinterested.

“That would give me more time,” the boy said, looking gratefully into

the affectionate, brotherly eyes that were bent steadily on his—“that’s

not a bad idea. If Latham took me as far as the Heath they’d never find

me there—never—then late to-night I could come back.”

“No,” Stephen interrupted, “not the Heath—it must be some place where I

can get to you; it may not be safe to come back to-night—they may leave

some one here to watch.”

“Yes,” Hugh agreed, “they’re almost sure to do that. Where shall I wait,

Stevie?”

Stephen Pryde winced at the old name of their playfellow days—Hugh had

not used it for years. But he had put his foot upon the fratricidal

plowshare of deceit and treachery, and it was beyond him to withdraw it

now. At that bitter moment he would have spared his brother if he

could—but it was too late. Suffering acutely (probably Cain suffered so

once), he said emphatically, “Oakhill! The wood on the other side.”

“But if they find me there,” Hugh objected, “I wouldn’t have a chance to

get away.”

Stephen’s hands were still on his brother’s shoulders and he leaned his

weight upon them.

“They won’t find you, my boy, trust me.”

It was enough, and Hugh’s answer came instant and content.

“All right, Stephen!”

“Good-by,” the elder said hastily. “I’ll go hurry up Latham; the sooner

you are away from here now the better.” He released Hugh, and turned to

go. But Hugh held out both his hands, and for a long moment the brothers

stood looking earnestly into each other’s eyes, hands gripped—Helen,

apart, watching them, dissatisfied. Then Stephen turned on his heel and

walked resolutely away, out of the room.

CHAPTER XXXVI

As Stephen’s step died in the distance, all Hugh’s uncertainty came

back, and he turned to Helen disconcertedly.

“I hope this is the right thing I am doing.”

“I am sure it is,” the girl said. “Dr. Latham thinks so too.”

“Are you? Still something keeps telling me I shouldn’t go—I dare say

it’s my imagination.”

“Why, yes,” she reassured him, “what difference could it make, Hugh,

whether you search this afternoon or this evening?”

“None, of course,” he admitted; “the strain has lasted so long it’s on

my nerves. Oh,” he broke out anew, “if I could only think where to look

now. But I can’t—I can’t.” He looked about the room distractedly.

Helen came to him, and put her hand on him. “It is going to be all

right, Hugh—I’m certain it’s going to be all right.”

“Yes, I hope so,” he said; “but, Helen, if it shouldn’t?”

“If it shouldn’t?” she said, startled, and touched too now by his

discomfort, his vacillation.

“This would have to be good-by, Helen.”

“No—no—no!” she said, choking.

“It would,” Hugh insisted sadly. “Oh, I dare say my record at the

front—would help me; no doubt the penalty wouldn’t be very severe—but

the whole story of the robbery would have to come out—the scandal would

always cling to me—I couldn’t let you share that.”

“Do you think I’d mind?”

He took her face in his hands. “You don’t realize what unhappiness it

would bring you.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said proudly. “I _want_ to share it with you.”

“No, Helen—unless I clear myself I can never see you again.” She caught

his hands, and held, them to her heart. He whitened under and over his

war-tan, but he added almost sternly, “I mean it.”

“And what about me?” she cried passionately. “Have you thought about

that?”

“It’s you I am thinking of, believe that.”

“Oh!” she cried, hurt, angry, rebellious, freeing herself from his

touch; but he caught her back and held her fast. He kissed her again and

again, and then—again.

“Hugh, my boy, my boy,” Mrs. Leavitt sobbed, bustling in upon them.

Helen moved away, and sat down wearily. Hugh bent to his aunt’s embrace.

“There, there, Aunt Caroline, don’t cry,” he entreated, as soon as he

could disentangle himself enough to be articulate.

“I can’t help it—I can’t help it,” Mrs. Leavitt wailed.

“Yes, but such big tears,” he coaxed, dabbing at them affectionately

with his khaki-colored handkerchief; “there, there, dear.”

But the poor childless Niobe would not be comforted.

“Oh! Hugh,” she sobbed, “you won’t let them take you away—you are not

going to let them take you away—promise me.”

“Why, of course not,” he said soothingly.

“I’m so frightened,” the woman moaned.

“There is no need to be frightened,” he told her briskly, “if you will

only do your part, dear Aunt Caroline.”

“What is my part?” Caroline Leavitt asked falteringly.

“None of the servants know I have been here—not even Barker has seen

me—get them away so they won’t see me leave.”

“Yes, dear,” his aunt said promptly, alert, business-like, Martha ready

and practical again under the stimulant of something definite to do,

some tangible service to render, some woman’s help to contribute.

“Go quickly, won’t you?” But he need not have said it, for already she

was hurrying from the room, and only half pausing to say, “Yes, at once.

You will come back, Hugh—you are sure to come back?”

“Yes,” he said confidently, “don’t worry, I’ll come back.”

“I’ll get them all in the kitchen and lock the door,” she said grimly,

and went.

Hugh nodded and he smiled until the door closed. Then he turned sadly to

Helen.

“Well, dear, I’d better go now.” She could not speak, but she nodded—as

bravely as she could. “Yes—keep up your courage, dear,” he told her;

“everything will turn out all right.”

But at that she broke down and threw her arms about him convulsively.

“I can’t let you go, Hugh, I can’t let you go.”

“I must go, dear, you know I must.” He kissed her—just once, and put

her from him, and went resolutely to the door. But in the doorway Dr.

Latham met him, and pushed him back into the room.

“I have bad news, Hugh,” the physician said.

“Bad news?” Helen cried.

Hugh said nothing. He knew.

“They have come for you—they know you are here,” Latham said quietly.

Hugh turned pityingly to Helen—his one thought of her, to comfort her.

But Helen, womanlike, was all courage now. She held out both hands; a

moment he pressed them, then turned and went, with a soldier’s gait,

toward the door.

“Scotland Yard men or a sergeant?” he asked Latham as he passed him.

“Soldiers,” Latham said.

“It’s tecs,” Barker cried in a wrathful panic, bursting through the

doorway. “Me not know tecs! That’s likely. I knew it was tecs the ’stant

I laid eyes on ’em—dressed up in a uneeform—but they’s tecs.” True to

her type, she had sensed “police” even through tunics and khaki. The

dullest servant, and the most inexperienced, have an unfailing flare for

the “tec.”

Latham pushed her gently from the room, but she ran down the hall

crying, “It’s tecs, I tell you; it’s tecs!”

CHAPTER XXXVII

“Military police, I suppose, or a non-com. and two privates,” Hugh said

as he and Latham went toward the morning room.

“Two outside the door,” Latham said, “a non-commissioned officer in the

morning room—a decent chap—very.”

Hugh nodded. “Oh, yes—and he’ll behave very decently to me—they

usually do in such cases—and a good deal is left to their discretion.

Undoubtedly it’s a non-com. and a trusted one. Good-by, Latham, and, I

say, thanks awfully.”

“I’m coming in with you.”

“No, go back to Helen, I’d rather.”

Latham wrung Hugh’s hand; and Hugh passed into the morning room and

closed the door.

“Here I am,” he said briskly.

The soldier standing waiting stepped back with an oath.

“Tare an’ ’ounds,” he exclaimed violently, “don’t you bey after tellin’

me it’s you, Carter.”

“Yes, Kinsella, I’m Pryde, wanted for desertion, all right. But, I say,

it’s hellish luck that they’ve sent you after me!”

“Sent and bey damned to thim. Oi’ll not bey after doin’ ut. The loikes

uv you! Oi’ll toike the stroips from me coat and ate ’em forst. Oi’ve

fought the Hoons for ’em, and Oi’ll bey after foighten uv ’em again, but

sorra a fist or a harm’ll Oi putt on you, Tom Carter—or Mister Proid,

sor, whichiver, whoiver, ye are.”

“I’m both,” Hugh told him. “Where’s your warrant?”

“Me warrent is it? It’s no warrent uv moin, my boy, ‘_sor_’ I’m after

mainin’. It’s a dirthy scrap uv paiper, an’ that’s what it is, fut to

spat at the Imperur uv the Hoons—cursed bey the doiy they giv’ it

myself.”

“Where are we going?” Hugh asked.

“To Hell wid going! you’re stayin’.”

“That’ll mean shooting, if not hanging, for both of us, Kinsella.”

“Mother of God! is it axin’ me to bey toiking ye that ye are? Me, that

ye carried on yer back and fed from yer cup fer all this woirld’s uf

Oi’d been yer baby an’ you the own mither uv me! We’ve starved and we’ve

shivered togither. We’ve stuck in the mud to our necks, glued there

loike flies in th’ amber, we’ve shared our rum tot and our billy, we’ve

gone over the top shoulder to shoulder—we’ve stood so close Oi’ve heard

your heart bate, and you’ve heard moine, whin we’ve been waitin’ for the

wurd to come to dash into the curtain uv fire uv the barrage, and

togither we’ve watched the flammin’ ruins uv Europe—and our pals

dropping and writhing under the very feet uv us as if they’d been lice

and Wilheim their Moses—Me arrest you! Oi’d sooner bey stealin’ the

shillin’s off the eyelids uv a dead baby!” His own Irish eyes were

brimful, and there was almost a sob in the lilt of the brogue on the tip

of his tongue.

Hugh Pryde marched up to him with a laugh and pushed him down into a

chair, then he swung himself onto a table and leaned over Kinsella, one

hand gripped on his arm.

“Listen to reason,” he said. “We are soldiers——”

“Begorra thin Oi’m a man though, an’ whin Oi can’t bey the both, it’s

man Oi’m choosin’ to bey, an’ not spalpeen.”

“We are soldiers,” Hugh said sternly; “you are here to arrest me, and

you are going to do it.”

“And Oi’m not thin,” the other retorted. “Our Lady’d blush to own me, if

ever Oi did such an Orangeman dirthy trick—an’ me a mimber of the

Sodality meself win Oi was a boy. Oi’d sooner bey shootin’ me own brains

into puddin’, an’ savin’ the Hoons the throuble uv it. Me shame the

loikes uv yerself—Oi’d as soon say a wrongin’ wourd to the Saints in

their shrines.”

“Listen,” Hugh told him again. “You want to help me?”

“Oi do that very same thing, thin.”

“Then do precisely as I tell you. I am going with you. I’d have had to

give myself up in a day or two. I was going to—as soon as I’d done

something I had to do here—something important. Now, I want you to stay

here quietly, and let me go back for half an hour. Then I’ll come here,

and we’ll go together and do what has to be done.”

“We will not thin.”

“You want to help me?”

“Sure it’s yourself as knows that.”

“Then you will do—as I say. It’s the only way, partner. I’ll be back.”

At the door he turned to say, “By the way, Kin, I did not desert.”

“Glory bey to God, as if Oi didn’t know that.”

“But I seemed to have done so. It can be cleared up, and it shall; but

the authorities are quite in the right—they thought I had.”

“An’ be damned to ’um—as blithering a set of auld wimin as iver wore

petticoats. Authorities is ut? Meddlin’ and blunderin’ an’ playin’ the

goat uv ut. That’s how they’ve been runnin’ this war from the furst day,

and from the furst day Oi’ve said it. Oh!” he broke forth, “don’t ye bey

after givin’ yerself up—and don’t ye bey after axin’ me to help ye do

it. Oi’d—Oi’d—Oi’d rather turn Hoon and lick-spitter their cur uv a

Kaiser than hurt wan hair uv yer head. I luv ye, Tom Carter. Oi sensed

ye were a gintleman the furst toime Oi saw ye—and Oi loiked ye in spoit

uv ut.”

“Will you wait for me for half an hour?”

“Toike yer toime,” Kinsella said grimly.

In the hall Hugh found Barker, and gave her a startling order for a tray

of refreshments to be taken to his “friend” in the morning room.

True to her word Mrs. Leavitt had packed the servants into the

kitchen—and then locked it. But she had been unable to find Barker, and

was still beating the house for her.

The larder was accessible, and Barker foraged nobly.

She carried a tray so heavy with good things that she only just could

carry it, into the morning room, a delighted smile on her face and her

best apron, hurriedly donned, very much askew.

But the morning room was empty.

The window was open, and down the path marched two surprised privates,

hurried and cursed by Sergeant Patrick Kinsella.

“Uv all th’ auld fools uv wimin,” he muttered, “ut isn’t the man wat’s

wanted at all at all, but anither entoirly. The bloak we’re after

wantin’s been gonn two hours and more—halfway to London, and out ur th’

counthry by this. Doouble-quick, now.” And they double-quicked.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

When Latham returned to the library he found Helen sitting by the

writing-table, one hand lying idly and resting on the jade paper weight.

He spoke to her, and she looked up and smiled at him rather vacantly,

but she said nothing. He gave her a sharp look, and then picked up a

magazine and sat down, pretending to read.

She sat very still. She seemed resting—and though he watched her, he

decided not to disturb her, to make no effort to arouse her.

And so they sat without a word until Hugh came back. Latham looked round

in surprise, but Helen scarcely seemed to notice.

“An hour’s reprieve,” Hugh said lightly. “Awfully decent chap in there.

Knew him at the front. He’ll make it as comfortable for me as he can.

I’ve told Barker to do him uncommonly well. And now, to search this room

in earnest!”

Stephen followed his brother into the library. “Some one has given you

away, Hugh,” he said sorrowfully. “The soldiers knew you were here, when

they came—the sergeant was so positive that all my denials were

useless. Who could it have been?”

“Don’t you know, Stephen?” Helen said softly, rising—the Joss in her

hand, but not even glancing at Pryde.

“How on earth would Stephen know?” Hugh said, going to his brother.

Stephen put out his hand. “I—I can’t tell you how sorry I am, Hugh.”

Hugh smiled at the elder. “I know, old boy, I know. And I’m not

worrying. It’ll come all right.”

Helen moved suddenly, sharply, as if some shock of electricity had

currented through her. Then she spoke, and her voice was strange.

“Blind—blind—blind!” It seemed as if she said it unconsciously. The

three men watched her intensely, each moved and apprehensive in a

different way, and from a different cause. She spoke again in the same

queer, mechanical manner, but this time her voice was louder, clearer,

more vibrant. “Blind—blind—blind!” To Hugh and to Latham the one word

repeated again and again conveyed nothing, but suddenly Stephen Pryde

remembered where he had heard it last, and he shuddered. She spoke

on—“As if he were an echo of the morning—‘Blind—blind—blind’!”

“Helen!” Hugh cried, alarmed for her.

“What is it?” Latham said to her insistently.

Stephen went to her quickly. “It’s nothing,” he said sharply.

“Nothing—only the parting with Hugh. It’s been a great strain on her.”

He turned to Hugh. “You had better go now, quickly.”

“No, no!” she said sharply, but looking at neither of them.

“Helen!” Hugh pled—distracted.

She heard him, and ran to him, brushing by Stephen.

“My dear,” she began, and faltered.

He put his arms about her. “There—there—you’re all right.”

The voice she loved best recalled her. “Of course I am,” she said

brightly.

“But why did you say those words just now?” he said, impelled to ask it,

though he understood a gesture of Latham’s that forbade all simulation

of her strange excitement.

“I don’t know. And I didn’t exactly seem to say them—they said

themselves. I don’t know what they mean, or where they come from; but

they keep running through my head—I can’t stop them somehow.”

“That’s odd,” Latham remarked, his interest in what seemed to him a

unique psychological case out-weighing his fear for the patient, “very

odd. I seem to have heard them before too. But I can’t think where.

What’s that you have in your hand?”

“Why—why, it’s his paper-weight—Daddy’s.” She held it up and gazed at

it intently, as an Indian seer gazes at his crystal. In a moment she

spoke again, her voice once more quite changed. “Did you ever read

‘David Copperfield,’ Helen?”

“What?” Latham said, unprofessionally tremulous with surprise and with

interest.

“Did you ever read ‘David Copperfield,’ Helen?” the mechanical voice

repeated automatically. The girl’s face was white and expressionless as

a death mask.

“‘David Copperfield’!” Stephen Pryde exclaimed hoarsely. And as he said

it he knew. And Helen knew too. She had readied the light. At that

moment Richard Bransby had got his message through. Stephen’s eyes went

to the table where the volume lay when he left the room the night his

uncle died—then slowly they traveled to the bookcase. In that moment

the whole thing was clear to him—as clear as if he had seen his

confession shut in the volume, the volume by some one at sometime

replaced on its shelf.

And Helen had grasped the meaning of the words she had uttered so oddly,

and repeatedly. She shrined the jade god in her hands, and looked raptly

at its green and rose surfaces and curves. Then she put it gently down

on the table, reverently too, as some devout Catholic might handle and

lay down a relic most holy—a relic miraculous and well proven. A dozen

lights played and quivered in and out of its multiple indentations and

intricate clefts; and the rose-hue petals seemed to quiver and color in

response, but the green face of the god was immovable, expressionless,

mute. But Latham’s eyes, scalpel-sharp, following Helen’s hands, thought

they saw a tiny eidolon star-shaped, yellow and ambient, slip from the

deep of the odd little figure, and hover a moment above it

significantly, before it broke with a bubble of fiercer light and

dissolved in a scintillation of minute flame. And Stephen Pryde,

watching only Helen, was sure that a rim of faint haze, impalpable,

delicately tinted and living, bordered and framed her.

Richard Bransby had gotten his message through—recorded at the moment

of his passing, and held safe ever since in the folds of the toy he had

treasured and handled with years-long habit and almost with

obsession—or flashed from his heart still living and potent to the soul

of his child. Richard Bransby had gotten his message through. And each

in their different way knew, received, and accepted it. The old room was

strangely cold. But not one of the four waiting and asking felt the

smallest sensation of fear—not even Stephen, defeated, convicted.

Helen spoke, and her voice rang clear and assured, the beautiful color

creeping back to her face, a great light in her eyes.

“Doctor—Hugh—Daddy asked me that very question just before he died.”

“That’s strange,” Latham said musingly, pondering as in all his

thoughtful years of reflection he had never pondered before.

Hugh was speechless. Stephen picked up a cigarette, and laid it down

again, with a bitter smile—the hopeless smile of final defeat.

“Just before he died,” Helen said.

“‘David Copperfield,’” Latham exclaimed; “of course—I remember now.

Those words you just said were a quotation from ‘David

Copperfield’—where he passes the blind beggar.”

“I think you are wrong, Latham.” Stephen Pryde made his last throw more

in cynical indifference than in desperation. His long game was up: that

was the special message that had come through to him. But he’d fight on,

cool and callous now, and meet his defeat in the last ditch of all—not

an inch sooner.

“No,” Latham said sternly; “I am not wrong.”

“Yes,” Stephen smiled with slight contemptuousness as he said it; “I am

sure you are.”

“I’ll show you,” Latham retorted. He went to the bookcase and took down

the ‘David Copperfield’ volume.

“Yes,” Helen said quietly; “‘David Copperfield’ has a message for

me—from Daddy.”

“This is nonsense,” Stephen said impatiently. “Latham, I appeal to you.”

“I tell you the message is there,” Helen said imperiously.

“It’s impossible,” Pryde began with a shrug.

“Then prove it to me,” the girl said hotly; “prove it to me—that’s the

only way you can convince me.”

“She’s right,” Hugh exclaimed; “of course, that’s the only way to help

her.”

There was a brief, tense pause, and then Latham, assuming the judiciary

and the dictatorship to which his being the one disinterested person

there entitled him, said—

“Yes. Well. If there was a message, it would be in the words you just

spoke—and their context.”

Helen nodded.

“I could find the place blindfold,” Latham continued. He sat down, the

book still in his hand. He opened it, turned but a page or two, and

said, “Yes, here it is.” The three listened with breathless eagerness,

as he read, “‘There was a beggar in the street when I went down, and as

I turned my head towards the window, thinking of her calm, seraphic

eyes, he made me start by muttering, as if he were an echo of the

morning, “Blind—Blind—Blind.”’” He closed the book and turned to

Helen.

“You see,” Stephen remarked quietly, “there’s nothing in it.”

“No,” Latham concurred reluctantly, disappointed, in spite of himself,

scientist as he was, skeptic as he once had thought himself; “no, your

suddenly remembering those words—it could have been no more than a

coincidence.”

“Yes, a coincidence,” Stephen echoed.

“That paper-weight,” the physician analyzed on, “was associated in your

mind with your father. When you took it in your hand, unconsciously you

went back to the last time you saw him alive.”

“That’s it,” Stephen said cordially. Really Latham could not have given

better service if he had briefed him.

Helen looked from one to another, she was on the verge of a breakdown

now—and just when she had been so sure. She held out her hands, and

Hugh came and led her gently back to the chair by the writing-table.

“Rest awhile,” he begged. “I’ll hunt in a moment.” He glanced anxiously

up at the clock.

“Oh, Daddy, Daddy,” Helen sobbed; “why didn’t you help me? Why didn’t

you help me?”

“Helen,” Stephen said gravely, bending over her chair, “that question is

answered. Your father’s dead—the dead never return. All this belief of

yours in immortality is a delusion. If you had listened to me, you would

have understood. But you wouldn’t. I tried to spare you suffering, but

you were so obstinate. You made me fight this dead man—” His voice,

which at first had been bitter but even, grew angry and discordant. His

iron nerve was cracking and bleating under the hideous strain—“you

tried to haunt me with some presence in this room—it’s been

ghastly—ghastly”—he was so cold he could scarcely articulate, his

tongue clicked icily against his stiffening cheek, and grew thicker and

thicker—“but this invisible foe, I’ve conquered it—this obsession of

yours, I’ve shown you how false, how hopeless it is—all this rubbish

about this book of Copperfield—and now you must put it all away for the

sake of others as well as yourself.” Helen rose very slowly, paying her

cousin not the slightest attention. Suddenly she grew rigid again; Hugh

and Latham, who had been regarding Stephen in amazement, looked only at

her now. Stephen continued speaking to her peremptorily, haranguing her

almost, “You understood that now, don’t you?”

Very slowly, again almost somnambulant, Helen turned, her hand

outstretched as it was before, towards the bookcase.

“Well,” Stephen Pryde cried roughly, “why don’t you answer me? Why don’t

you answer me? You heard what I said!” She moved slowly across the room.

“For the future you must rely on me, on me,” Pryde pounded on. “Your

father can’t help you now,” he added brutally. Still she paid no heed.

Still she moved—so slowly that she scarcely seemed to move, across the

room. All at once Pryde understood where she was going, what she was

going to do. He was horror-struck, and made as if to pull her back

roughly, but Latham moved in between them.

“Helen, what are you doing?” Stephen shrieked—“what are you doing?”

Still she paid no attention, but moved slowly, serenely on, until she

reached the mahogany table on which Latham had placed “David

Copperfield.” Not looking at it, her head held high, her eyes wide but

sightless and glazed, she put out her hand and lifted up the volume,

holding it by one cover only. An instant she stood with the book at

arm’s length.

Stephen’s breath came in great noisy pants, audible both to Hugh and

Latham.

Helen moved her arm gently, shaking the volume she held. Slowly,

quietly, as if conscious of its own significance, a paper slipped from

between the inverted pages, and fell to the floor.

“Oh, my God!” Stephen sobbed with a nasty choke. Then he swooped towards

the paper. But Latham, who had been watching him again, and this time

with a physician’s taut scrutiny, reached it first and secured it. Pryde

fell back with a piteous laugh, maudlin, pathetic.

“Read it, I can’t,” Helen said, pointing to the paper. Latham and Hugh

bent over it together.

Hugh read only the first few lines, and then hid his shamed face in his

hands, and sobbed like a child. But Latham read on till he had read it

all.

Helen hurried to Hugh, but Latham held out the document to her with a

gesture not to be disregarded, even for a moment. She went to him, and

took the paper. For an instant she shook so that the writing danced and

mocked her. Then she drew herself up, and read it through, slowly and

carefully—from its first word to its last. Read, she refolded it, and

with an earnest look handed it back to Latham.

Slowly, quietly she turned—not to Hugh, but to Stephen. He stood near

the door, trembling and cringing, his eyes fixed and staring—at

something—cringing as if some terrible hand clutched or menaced him.

With a cry of pain and of terror, such as the sufferers in Purgatory may

shriek, he rushed from the room, sobbing and gibbering,

“Don’t touch me, Uncle Dick! Don’t touch me!”

Helen, scorn, hatred on her face, and no atom of pity, was following

him; but Latham stayed her.

“I’ll go,” he said; “there is mania in his eyes. Stay with Hugh, he

needs you. I’ll see to Pryde.” He thrust the confession in his

pocket-book, the pocket-book in his coat. “That paper,” he told her,

“will straighten out Hugh’s trouble. He’ll be free and clear to-morrow,

believe me. But stay with him now; he needs you.”

Helen yielded. She went and knelt down by Hugh and laid her hands on his

knee. As Latham was leaving the room, she said to him, with a grave

smile—

“You see, you were wrong, Doctor. Daddy did come to me.”

“I wonder,” was his reply. “I wonder. Finding the paper in that book may

all have been coincidence—who knows?”

“Daddy and I know,” Helen said; “Daddy and I know.”

CHAPTER XXXIX

Stephen turned restlessly on his pillows, and Angela Latham bent down

and cozied them deftly.

“You’re a wonderful nurse,” he told her gratefully.

“Not bad, am I?”

“I’ve made you a great deal of trouble.”

“You have,” Mrs. Latham returned cordially. “But you know what Mrs.

Hemans says, or perhaps it’s Mark Twain, I always get them mixed, ‘the

labor we delight in physics pain’—I’ve quite enjoyed the trouble—and

Georgie Washington, but you begin to do me credit. You’re going to be a

good boy now and do just as I say.”

“Am I?” Pryde said skeptically.

Angela held out her ring-heavy hand. “Put it there, pard,” she

commanded. And after a moment the sick man lifted his thin, bloodless

hand and laid it in hers. “Perhaps I’m going to be good—though it

hadn’t occurred to me till you mentioned it—but I can scarcely be

required to be a boy. I was quite a year or two old at your birth.”

“Never mind, I’ve been a mother to you.”

“Heavens, yes; you have,” Stephen replied.

He lay in his own bed in Pont Street, and nothing was much changed in

his room from what it had been for years; a temple and workshop of

flight. Pictures of birds, of bats and of butterflies and of man-made

aircraft covered the walls. The skeleton of a flying fox shared the

glass case of a flying fish. A long workmanlike table stretched the

length of the room—a table stacked with orderly piles of plans and

designs, groups of models, trays of “parts” and of tools. Every book in

the room (and they were many) treated of the air and air navigation.

“Not a novel in the whole show,” Angela had told her husband

disgustedly. And on Stephen’s desk lay a half-finished manuscript

positively bristling with small detail drawings of rotary and fixed

engines, sketches of exhaust manifolds and working diagrams of

many-bladed propellers, his pen beside it, as he had left it on the last

day he had journeyed to Oxshott.

The woman bustled about the room and the man lay and watched her, a

gentler look in his eyes than those poor anxious organs had shown for

years.

“That’s a wonderful frock,” he said lazily.

“Great Scott, and I with no apron on! Why didn’t you tell me before?”

she said excitedly, and dashed to the chest of drawers, opened one

drawer, and shook out a voluminous apron, all-covering as a hospital

apron, but more decorative.

“It’s a shame to cover it,” Stephen objected.

“It’s my going-away dress, the very first dress Angela M. Latham ever

was hooked and laced into, and you needn’t think I’m going to spill ox

tail soup, Top Bronnen water, peaches and wine over it. The chinchilla

it’s trimmed with cost eighty guineas, and every inch of the lace cost

half a crown—hand crocheted.” She relentlessly tied the frilled and

ribboned strings of the apron about her slim waist. “If you like this, I

wonder what you’d have said to my wedding dress. I’m going to be painted

in it—by one of the very biggest big-bugs. I want Poynter, because he’s

the president of the brush and paint boys, and the president seemed

about the right thing to draw an American’s picture, but Horace says

Poynter doesn’t do portraits. My wedding dress was—well, really it

was—and I designed it two minutes after we were engaged. Quick work. It

was velvet, just _not_ white, the faintest, loveliest tinge of green you

ever saw; there was white fox at the hem, not too much, that’s half the

art of dressing—narrow really in front, but it widened out as it went

around till it measured over two feet at the very back. And my bonnet,

not much bigger than a big butterfly, nothing but pearls and one ear of

point lace, lined with green—emerald green to show it up—You’re not

listening.”

“Look here,” Stephen told her. “You are simply marking time. You have

something to tell me, and you are nervous and afraid to say it. The

sooner such things are said and done with the better. But first there

are one or two things I want to know, that I must know and am going to

know. So we’ll have them now, please.”

“I quite agree,” Angela said, relieved at the prospect of the immediate

passing of a tension. “Fire ahead. Question number one?”

“I want to know just what happened—when I was taken ill—what happened

afterwards and all along. My mind’s a bit blank. But first tell me

about—Helen.”

Angela busied herself desperately at the toilet-table, dusting already

speckless silver with her absurd apron, sniffing interrogatively at

toilet bottles with the contents of which she was perfectly familiar,

moving brushes recklessly, but she answered briskly, and with merciful

promptitude.

“They were married six weeks ago. No fuss, not even a cake, a gray dress

plainer’n plain. A week knocking about in a motor-car, Heaven knows

where. Hugh is doing some fool thing or other at the War Office.

Temporary something or other. He goes back to the front next week. Now

I’ll go back to the beginning and tell you everything.”

“Please don’t,” Stephen said grimly. “Just the important items briefly.”

“Right-o,” Mrs. Latham said amicably, perching herself on the foot of

the bed—“perfectly plain, no trimming, no colored lights, no slow

music. Well! Helen found a paper that cleared Hugh. There were Tommies

in the morning room, or somewhere, sent to arrest Hugh, but when he and

Horace went in, nary a Tommy was there—and the silver was all right

too—and not even the beer touched. Barker had got rid of them—charmed

them away: awfully clever girl, Barker, only your aunt never could see

it. Well, Hugh couldn’t be arrested because there was nobody there to

arrest him, but he went up to Whitehall the next day with Horace and Sir

Somebody Something who’s no end of a lawyer and a very big-wig, and

after a few miles of your charming British red tape, well, that was

O.K.! See? Forgiven. Forgotten. Commission restored.” She slid from the

bed and strutted daintily about the room tooting the Anthem from an

imaginary bugle, its mouthpiece her own sparkling hand. It was a pretty

piece of burlesque—delicately done—and briefly.

Pryde waited quietly; it was simplest, easiest so, he thought, and far

quickest. “Rule, Britannia,” followed the Anthem, “John Brown’s Body”

followed “Rule, Britannia,” and then she discoursed “Deutschland,

Deutschland über alles.” But Pryde was invulnerable, not to be teased as

Horace Latham was; and she ceased as suddenly as she had begun and

perched back on the bed. “By the way,” she said, “Hugh burned

that—that—document thing Helen’d found in the Thackeray book—or

perhaps it was Charlotte Brontë, or ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin.’ We Southerners

don’t think any too much of ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin.’”

“Burned it?” Stephen said sharply. “Are you sure?”

“Quite.” Mrs. Latham nodded.

“Why?”

“You can search me. But far’s I remember, it was to get rid of it—and

that seems a likely reason. I think Hugh said it wouldn’t be needed

again. Helen is ‘Bransby’s’—no one else could make any trouble—and

something had been fixed up—all hunky-dorey and everything.”

“Was—was she willing—willing it should be burned?”

“She was not. But Hugh had his way. Men do in this upside-down,

inside-out old country. But I bet you a gooseberry to a guinea Horace

Latham won’t—not so you’d notice it.”

“I decline the wager,” Pryde told her. “Go on.”

“Well, you—you were feverish, and fancied all sorts of things that

time—when the paper was found. Thought you saw things.”

“I saw Uncle Dick, if that’s what you mean,” Stephen said quietly. “I

know I’ve been very ill—had brain fever, and all that—but I did see

Uncle Dick. It was no delusion.”

Angela nodded gravely. “Of course you did. _I’ve_ never doubted it for a

moment. Isn’t it perfectly wonderful—oh!—if they’d only let the

Spiritualists run this war, we’d have the poor old Kaiser dished in a

jiff. But they won’t.”

“No, probably not,” Pryde concurred. “Go on.”

“I am going on—as fast as I can. Well, you sailed out of the library,

the night you fell ill, and went up to your room, and rammed some things

in a bag—Horace followed you up and found you doing it. He saw you were

queer, and he ordered you to bed, but you just ordered him out of your

room and left the house. No one could stop you. I don’t think Hugh or

Horace really wanted to: anyway they couldn’t and they didn’t. You piled

up here to London. Where you went here or what you did here, I can’t

tell you, for nobody knows. But two days after you left Oxshott, I was

having tea in my sitting-room at my hotel—I’d come up to hustle my

dressmakers—when in you walked. You were as mad as six March hares—and

in about five minutes you fell down with a fit.”

“Fit?” Stephen said it rather indignantly.

“Well—if it wasn’t, it was a pretty good imitation one. I called it a

fit. Horace called it something in Latin. And you began saying things

you’d no business to say, so I wasn’t going to call any one in. So I

just got you into the next room, and on to the bed.”

“You?”

“Me!”

“But you couldn’t.”

“No, of course I couldn’t. But I did. You can’t faze an American woman.

We’re not made that way. You’re not so awfully heavy, and I just hauled

and twisted until I’d done it. You never know till you try. I don’t go

in much for horses—I never did. But once I held a runaway team of Blue

Grass Kentuckies for three miles on the Shell Road, outside ’Frisco.

They pulled. But I held on. And I slowed them down all right in the end.

I got you on to the bed and telephoned for Horace. No strangers wanted!

You fussed about a bit—but I managed.”

“Why did you bother?” he asked in a curious tone. Her answer was prompt.

“Because I like you. I always have liked you—very much indeed.”

The sick man’s thin hand crept over the eiderdown and rested on hers.

“Horace came,” she continued, “and we bundled you up in blankets and

things and brought you around here. At first I said you shouldn’t be

moved. But Horace said you’d be better here than so near Bond Street,

and, after all, he’s a doctor. So—well, we just moved you.”

“And you’ve nursed me ever since.”

“I’ve done most of it,” Angela said proudly. “I’m some nurse. I always

was. And you did talk so. Talk about women! I simply couldn’t let a

stranger come pothering. You were very ill, but you soon got better, and

Mr. Grant helped me.”

“Yes—I’ve known he was here.” Stephen had thought Grant on guard for

Helen and Hugh. He knew better now. He lay for a while very quiet,

thinking it over.

“He stayed with you all the time the week we were married. It didn’t

take long—getting married doesn’t take long, if you go about it the

right way.”

“It takes more than a lifetime sometimes,” Stephen said bitterly.

Angela rubbed his thin hand against her face. “I know, dear,” she said.

“You had a very short honeymoon. Was that on my account?”

“Four days. Yes, you poor child, I wasn’t going to leave you too long.”

Stephen said nothing. He couldn’t—say anything.

“Are you happy?” he asked after a time.

“Me and Horace? Oh! so-so.” But she dimpled and flushed eloquently.

“So-so—but our troubles have begun already: servants. Horace’s have all

given us notice—the silly old frumps. They don’t like me chattering

German all over the house. You English haven’t much sense of humor, and

English servants have none. Noah—the butler, his name is Ryder, but I

call him ‘Noah,’ he’s been with Horace since the flood—Noah sulked

whenever I spoke to him in German, and the housekeeper was rude. Well, I

bundled her off lickety-click. Then I began to teach Horace German. He

read it well enough, but his accent was awful. So I took him in hand.

And last night—after dinner—he’d been singing to me—the sweetest love

song ever made—in Germany—don’t you think so? ‘Du bist wie eine Blume,

So hold, und schön und rein!’—The head parlor-maid and the cook—and

the buttons and all the rest, flounced in and gave notice in a bunch.

When this war’s over, I shall send to a woman I know in Hong Kong to

send me a boat-load of decent servants. I never had real-servant comfort

but once in all my life—and that was in ’Frisco, where every maid we

had was a Chinaman.”

“I doubt if they’d fit in in Harley Street,” Stephen said lazily. “I’d

try ’em at Oxshott first, if I were you.”

“They’ll fit in anywhere; that’s the beauty of them. I’ll have them in

both places—no fear! I’m not very sure that I like Harley Street—and

there isn’t a nook, or a twist or a turn in our entire house. But I’m

going to have Horace stick a roof-garden on.”

“Why don’t you make him move?”

“He won’t. I’ve told him to over and over. Oh! I can manage Horace easy

enough—_except_ where his profession comes in; he will have his own way

there—and, after all, he is a doctor, you know.”

Pryde smiled.

“Have you thought of what you’d do the next few years?” Angela asked

rather timidly when some silent moments had passed.

“A deuce of a lot!”

“Well—that’s one of the two things _I_ want to talk about, only it’s

hard to begin. But I’ve got it all planned—every bit—”

Stephen Pryde laughed.

“You’ve nothing at all to do, but agree—not a thing. First of all,

guess who’s coming?”

“Hugh?”

The woman nodded.

“I’d rather he didn’t.”

“I know,” she said—“but please—”

Pryde shrugged his shoulder against the pillow. “Oh! all right. What

does it matter? He coming here? When?”

Mrs. Latham glanced at the clock. “In about half an hour.”

CHAPTER XL

Hugh was embarrassed and awkward when he came in; Stephen was neither.

He lay comfortably on his plumped-up pillows and regarded his brother

with a slight, cynical smile.

“Hello, Steve,” the younger said.

Stephen said nothing.

“Jolly fine to see you getting on—Ripping—what—”

“Take it easy,” Stephen said amusedly. “I don’t worry: you needn’t.”

Mrs. Latham pushed a chair to the bed, and Hugh sat down awkwardly, and

put down on the small table near Stephen’s pillow a parcel. Stephen eyed

it quizzically. “Grapes,” Hugh remarked lamely.

“Why have you come?” the elder demanded.

“To see you, old fellow,” his brother told him.

“What do you want?”

“Haven’t you told him?” Hugh asked Angela, in a palpable panic. She

shook her head. “Funked it?”

“Certainly not,” she replied severely. “Merely I hadn’t got to it yet.”

“See here.” Stephen spoke crisply. “We’ll cut all the circumlocutions

out. You needn’t be so damned crumpled up, Hugh. If you’ve come here

with any idea of letting me down easy, you’ve wasted your time.”

He raised himself up on his pillows and faced his brother defiantly.

Hugh blushed like a girl, and fumbled his cap—but sat speechless.

“When we were children you had all the best of it,” Stephen continued.

“You’ve had all the best of it all along. You’ve got the best of it

now.” Hugh dropped his eyes to his boots, a picture of guilt and

discomfort. “We both cared—a good deal—for—Mother. You were her

favorite. I was willing. You were the kid—and, believe it or not, I was

willing. And I was good to you—for years.”

“God—yes—very,” Hugh said heartily, lifting his troubled eyes to

Stephen’s.

“We came to Deep Dale. My heart was sorer than yours. I’d known Mother

longer; I missed her more than you did; I needed her more. Well—you had

all the fat of it—at Oxshott: there was none of it I grudged you,

none—but I was a boy too, and I wanted my share; and I didn’t get it. I

had clothes, and food, and servants, and saw a future open up before me,

a future of wealth and power. But I wanted love too. I had more brains

in my toe than you had in your carcass—and Uncle Dick saw it. He began

to take interest in me, to talk to me, to draw me out, he took no end of

pains over my education, and before long to plan my future as his

ultimate successor at ‘Bransby’s’—but he loved you. And I would have

given my poor little hide to have had just half of that love. All my

life—ever since I can remember—every day of it, I’ve wanted some one

to love me—and no one ever has really—Mother—did half; since she

died, no one.”

The fire hissed and flamed in the hearth, and Stephen lay watching it

moodily. No one spoke for a long time. It seemed as if none of them

could. Hugh was choking. Angela Latham was crying.

At last Stephen spoke, taking up again the sorry parable of his tragedy.

“I waited on Aunt Caroline; she waited on you—and I—I wanted a little

mothering so. I worked like a navvy, and won prizes at Harrow and

Oxford. Uncle Dick said, ‘Creditable, Stephen, quite creditable,’ and

gave me a fiver—and I—I wanted the feel of his hand on my shoulder.

You played the silly goat at Harrow and at Magdalen, and Uncle Dick

said, ‘Tut-tut,’ and bought you a hunter, and coddled you generally. I

was driven in on myself, I tell you, at every point. I wanted human

affection, and I was left alone to browse on my own canker. Well—I

did—I lived alone. There wasn’t a beast on the place, or a servant

either, that didn’t come at your whistle and fawn on you, and run from

me, if it dared. I lived alone—and was lonely. I lay in the woods as a

boy. I worked at that bench when I was older. I dreamed and I planned

and I schemed to do a big thing, a damned fine thing too—a bigger thing

than you ever could have understood. But Richard Bransby could have

understood; he had brains. If you’d wanted to fly on a contrivance of

dragon-flies to the moon, he’d have considered whether he couldn’t

gratify you, and have turned you down in the end, kindly and

generously—but me—it wasn’t the flying and the aircraft I cared about

really in the first place; it was the dreaming, and something to take

the place of people—the people I wanted and couldn’t have—” Mrs.

Latham was sobbing. “Then, presently, I got caught in the charm of the

wonderful thing—and went mad—dæmonized, as the old Greeks were—the

men who did the great things, the greatest the world has ever had done.

Birds were my prophets—my playfellows, the only ones I had, poor little

devil. You played with Helen, I sat apart—and watched you—and then I

got to watching the birds and the bats and the insects that flew

instead—sometimes. I worked tremendously at drawing and maths and fifty

other things that I might be able to invent aircraft and perfect it. But

no—Uncle Dick would have none of it. But, by God, I’ll do it yet, I

tell you—”

Angela slipped in between the bed and the table, and sat down on the

coverlet.

“You must not talk too long,” she said gently.

“Won’t you try some grapes?” Hugh said huskily.

Stephen laughed mirthlessly. “No.” To Mrs. Latham he said, “I’m almost

done. There was something I wanted more than I wanted an aerial career,”

he went on, looking Hugh full in the face—“more than you ever wanted

anything in your life—or could want anything—or many men could. It was

not for me. And I might have won it, if it hadn’t been for Uncle Dick.

Oh! it wasn’t you who thwarted me—you needn’t think it was—it was he.

Always he thwarted me. I did my best to thwart him in return. I wasn’t

glad to hurt you, Hugh, truly I wasn’t—” For just an instant his voice

softened and suspended. Then he went bitterly on, “You were in the way,

and you had to go—that was all—but I’d very much rather it had been

any one else. I owed Uncle Dick a good deal, and I tried to pay it. And

I’d do it again.”

Hugh held out his hand timidly; it was in apology too. Stephen ignored

it, and bent his eyes to the fire.

“Now,” he said, after a long, brooding pause, “you know the depth of my

penitence. We’ll talk about something else.”

“We will,” Angela said briskly, but her voice shook. “You say you are

going to succeed at the aircraft thing yet. Do you know how you are

going to do it?”

“No,” Stephen said gruffly.

“Well, then, I do. We’ve planned it all—Hugh and I.”

Stephen sat up in the bed, he shot her a glance, and then fixed his eyes

on his brother. Hugh nodded and went horribly red.

“You are going to do it in South America. That’s the place, where you

won’t be overlooked, and half your inventions and things stolen before

you’ve perfected them. It’s going to be an enormous thing, our

firm—just we three partners. Your brains, your control, my money—and a

little from Hugh, and your own too, of course—and all ‘Bransby’s,’

influence and co-operation back of us. It will need a rare lot of

capital. Well, it’s ready.”

Stephen paid no attention to her, but he said to his brother—

“Do you mean it?”

“Yes, Stevie—and jolly glad, and pleased—”

Stephen silenced him with a gesture. “Well, I don’t. I’d die first.”

“You’ll die after,” Mrs. Latham remarked.

She put her hand on his face. “You are going to do this for me. I’ve

millions, and you are going to double them.”

“I could.”

“You are going to.”

He looked at her then. “Why do you wish to do this—this big thing?”

“Because I like you. And when I like, I like. Never again dare say no

one cares for you, Stephen. I care. I liked you cordially from the very

first—and believed in you. I like you a thousand times more now. Next

to Horace, there is no one in all the world I care for half so much.

Won’t you do this for me—consent for my sake?”

A slow color crept into the sick, white face. “I’d like to,” Pryde said

gently—“but I can’t. Don’t—don’t say any more about it—please.”

Then Hugh Pryde did the one dramatic thing of his life. A calendar hung

on the wall. Hugh pointed to it.

“Do you know what day this is, Stephen?”

Stephen nodded. “I never forget—” There was mist in his stubborn eyes.

And in a flash of intuition, Angela understood: this was Violet Pryde’s

birthday.

“Won’t you consent, for her sake?” Hugh said. “She would ask you to if

she could.”

“Perhaps she is asking you to?” Angela whispered.

Half a moment beat out in silence. Then Stephen said—

“Yes, Hugh, I’ll do it—and thank you both—I’ll do it for Mrs. Latham’s

sake—and for Mother’s.” He held out his thin hand—Hugh gripped it. But

Angela bent swiftly over Stephen—and kissed him.

THE END

* * * * *

Transcriber’s Notes:

Minor printer errors have been corrected without note. Inconsistency in

hyphenation has been retained. Other errors have been corrected as noted

below:

On page 193 of the book, Paul Latham was used as a name for Dr. Latham.

In all other locations in the book, he was named Horace.

Paul has been replaced with Horace.

Paul Latham shook his head ==> Horace Latham shook his head