I
Straight on before them stretched the street, a wide and unobstructed way at first, but narrowing a little farther on, where there were, besides, buildings going up, and great piles of lumber standing far out in the road, and heaps of sand, and mortar-beds. Could he possibly get the horses under control before they reached those cruel lumber piles, where to be thrown meant death or worse? They were running wildly, and it was down hill all the way. She did not believe that human strength could do it, not even Neil’s, and he was as strong as he was tender. She looked down at his hands and noticed how white the knuckles were, and how the veins stood out, and then she bent her head that she might not see those fatal obstructions in their way, and clasped her hands as tightly as her lips. She found herself senselessly repeating, over and over, as if it were a charm, “Broad is the way ... that leadeth to destruction.”
It was a June morning, cool and sweet. If ever, life is dear in June. Her eyes fell on the great bunch of white roses in her lap. He had put them in her hands just as they were starting, and then had bent suddenly and left a quick kiss on the hands. It was only the other day he had told her that he had never, from the very first hour they met, seen her hands without longing to fill them with flowers. Would she be pleased to take notice, now that he possessed the right, he meant to exercise it?
Poor roses! Must they be crushed and mangled, too? She did not like the thought of scarlet stains upon their whiteness, and with some wild thought of saving them—for were they not his roses?—she flung them with a sudden gesture into the street.
“Oh, Christ!” she cried, voicelessly, “spare both of us—or neither!”
It was just then that the horses swerved and reared, the carriage struck something in the road and tilted sharply to the right. She clutched the side involuntarily and kept her seat. When, a second later, the carriage had righted itself, and the horses, more terrified still and now wholly uncontrolled, were dashing forward again, the place beside her was vacant, and the reins were dragging on the ground.
She shut her eyes and waited. It was not long to wait. There came a crash, a whirl, and then unconsciousness.
The evening papers contained an account of the fortunate escape from serious disaster of Mr. Neil Hardesty and Miss Mildred Fabian, who were on their way to a field meeting of the Hambeth Historical Society when the young blooded horses Mr. Hardesty was driving took fright at a bonfire at the corner of State and Market Streets, and started to run. Owing to the sharp down-grade at this point, their driver was unable to control them. After keeping their course in a mad gallop down State Street for a quarter of a mile, the carriage struck an obstruction, tipped, and Mr. Hardesty was thrown out, being severely bruised, but sustaining no serious injuries. The horses continued running wildly for two blocks more, when one of them ran against a lamp-post and was knocked down, upsetting the carriage and throwing Miss Fabian out. She was picked up unconscious, but beyond a cut on the head was also fortunately uninjured. Mr. Hardesty and Miss Fabian were to be congratulated upon the results of the runaway, as such an accident could hardly occur once in a hundred times without more serious, and probably fatal, consequences.
It was some two weeks later that the family physician, consulting with Mrs. Fabian in the hall, shook his head and said he did not understand it; there was no apparent reason why Miss Mildred should not have rallied immediately from the accident. The shock to her nervous system had doubtless been greater than he had at first supposed. Still, she had been in sound health, and there seemed no sufficient cause for her marked weakness and depression. He would prepare a tonic and send it up.
Meeting Neil Hardesty, himself an unfledged medical student, entering the house, the doctor stopped to observe:
“You must try to rouse your fiancée a little. Can’t you cheer her up, Hardesty? She seems very much depressed nervously. Perhaps it is only natural after such a close shave as you had. I did not care to look death in the face at that age. It sometimes startles young people and happy ones.”
Neil shook his head with an anxious look.
“It is not that,” he said, “for she is half an angel already. But I will do my best,” and he passed on through the broad, airy, darkened hall to the high veranda at the back of the house, where he knew he should find her at that hour.
The veranda overlooked the garden, blazing just then with the flowers of early July. She was lying languidly in her sea-chair; there were books around her, but she had not been reading; and work, but she had not been sewing. One hand was lifted shading her face. The lines around her mouth were fixed as if she were in pain.
He came forward quickly and knelt beside the chair. He was carrying some brilliant clusters of scarlet lilies, and he caught the small and rather chilly hand, and held it over them as if to warm it in their splendid flame.
“Do you know that you look cold?” he demanded. “I want you to look at these and hold them till you are warmed through and through. What an absurd child it is to look so chilly in July!”
She raised her eyes and let them rest on him with a sudden radiant expression of satisfaction.
“It is because you are so unkind as to go away—occasionally,” she remarked. “Do I ever look cold or unhappy or dissatisfied while you are here?”
“Once or twice in the last two weeks you have been all of that. Sweetheart, I must know what it means. Don’t you see you must tell me? How can one do anything for you when one doesn’t know what is the matter? And I am under orders to see that you get well forthwith. The doctor has given you up—to me!”
He was startled when, instead of the laughing answer for which he looked, she caught her breath with half a sob.
“Must I tell you?” she said. “Neil, I do not dare! When you are here I know it is not so. It is only when you are away from me that the hideous thought comes. And I fight it so! It is only because I am tired with fighting it that I do not get strong.”
“Dear, what can you mean?”
She shook her head.
“It is too horrible, and you would never forgive me, though I know it cannot be true. Oh, Neil, Neil, Neil!”
“Mildred, this is folly. I insist that you tell me at once.” His tone had lost its tender playfulness and was peremptory now. “Don’t you see that you are torturing me?” he said.
She looked at him helplessly.
“That day,” she said, reluctantly, “when the carriage tipped and you went out, I thought—I thought you jumped. Neil, don’t look so; I knew you could not have done it, and yet I can’t get rid of the thought, and it tortures me that I can think it—of you. Oh, I have hurt you!”
He was no longer kneeling beside her, but had risen and was leaning against one of the pillars of the veranda, looking down at her with an expression she had never dreamed of seeing in his eyes when they rested on her face. He was white to the lips.
“You thought that? You have thought it these two weeks?”
“I tell you it is torture. Neil, say you did not, and let me be at rest.”
“And you ask me to deny it? You?” His voice was very bitter. “I wonder if you know what you are saying?”
“Neil, Neil, say you did not!”
He set his teeth.
“Never!”
He broke the silence which followed by asking, wearily, at last:
“What was your idea in telling me this, Mildred? Of course you knew it was the sort of thing that is irrevocable.”
“I knew nothing except that I must get rid of the thought.”
“Can’t you imagine what it is to a man to be charged with cowardice?”
“I charge nothing. But if you would only deny it!”
“Oh, this is hopeless!” he said, with an impatient groan. “It is irremediable. If I denied it, you would still doubt; but even if you did not, I could never forget that you had once thought me a coward. There are some things one may not forgive.”
Silence again.
“And my—my wife must never have doubted me.”
She raised her eyes at last.
“If you are going, pray go at once,” she said. “I am too weak for this.”
She said it, but she did not mean it. After all, it was the one impossible thing on earth that anything should come between them. Surely she could not alter the course of two lives by five minutes of unguarded hysterical speech or a week or two of unfounded fretting.
But he took up his hat, and turned it in his hands.
“As you wish,” he said, coldly, and then “Good-morning,” and was gone.