CHAPTER THREE
The Blairs met about the breakfast table next morning at the usual time; a matter of four hours for sleep instead of eight would have been insufficient excuse to Austen for further upsetting of routine; and there was none of the chit-chat that would seem natural on a morning following the giving of a large social affair.
Aunt Harriet was dumb and Uncle Austen tense, or so it seemed to the third and youngest Blair about the board. She had been conscious of sharp interchange checked as she entered. Uncle Austen even forgot to look up at her interrogatively as she came in, though she was a moment late.
Was the trouble still about the Major? Was Aunt Harriet determined to go with him Friday evening?
Whatever the cause, Friday came, with the strained relations between sister and brother unrelieved.
The town was in the midst of its social season, the Blair reception being one of several crowding each other. On this Friday Harriet and Alexina were to attend an afternoon affair, and later Alexina was to go to an evening occasion with her uncle, who had consented icily, as though to emphasize the fact that it was Harriet’s engagement which made it necessary for him to take the girl.
Alexina, coming down a little before five, found Harriet standing in the parlour, ready, gloves on and wrap on a chair. To be young is to be ardent. Not all youthful things are young. Alexina was young.
“You are beautiful, Aunt Harriet,” she declared.
But it was as if Harriet did not hear. Was it premonition, that strained absorption?
“A moment, Alexina,” she was saying. “Listen, was that the bell?”
“John, probably,” said Alexina, “to let us know the carriage is waiting.”
But it was Major Rathbone who came in upon them in his quick fashion a moment later. His overcoat was a cape affair which somehow seemed to suit his personality, and ever after Alexina could see him throwing the cavalier-like drapery back with impatient gesture.
“You are not gone then, Harriet,” he said; “I am glad for that.”
Quickly as the words were spoken, the Harriet on his lips was not lost upon Alexina. She turned to go, quite hot and with impulsive haste, but the Major, putting out a hand, detained her.
“No, Miss Alexina; I’d really rather you would stay if you will be so kind,” he said, then turned to the older woman. “I have just had some words with your brother on the club-house steps and I knocked him down. I came on straight here, preferring you should hear my regret from myself. I lost my temper.”
He was facing Harriet, who had taken a step towards him at his entrance, then had stopped. Looking at her he went on rapidly:
“There is this I want to say. Yesterday I thought never to have the right to say it since I was too poor to ask you to listen. To-night I came here to say that I love you from my soul, and near you or away from you, alive or dead, will go on loving you and wanting you. Had you been poor I would have fought like any man to make you care; as it is I knocked your brother down for saying I was trying to do it because you are rich, to further my political ambition. I knocked him down for that, and for some other, older reasons. There is nothing more to say; no, in the divine bigness of your nature don’t think you have to speak. I cannot come here any more, even if you would permit me, after what has happened, and I can’t expect you to go to-night of course. But if ever I can serve you I am yours, soul and body, and will be while there is life in me. That’s all at last. What,” as he turned, “crying, Miss Alexina? For me? Or for him? I assure you there was little hurt but his arrogance. Dare I ask you to shake hands?”
And he was gone in his abruptly quick fashion and the latch of the outer door was heard clicking behind him.
It aroused Harriet and she came to herself. She was trembling, but on her face was a look of one who has entered Heaven. Then it seemed to come to her that he was gone.
“I must—oh, stop him, Alexina. He must know—”
The girl ran into the hall, but the outer door was heavy, and in her haste she was awkward getting it open. As it gave finally the rush of wind drove her inward. The steady rainfall of the day, freezing as it touched the ground, had changed to finely driven sleet. The steps glared with ice. But already the Major was at the gate, and through the dusk she could see his umbrella lowered against the wind as he turned and started up the street. She called after him impulsively, beseechingly, but realized the futility of it through the fierce rush of wind and sleet. John was just driving out the carriage-way from the stable. Indeterminate, she closed the door and turned back to the parlour.
Harriet had sunk upon a chair, and in her eyes, looking far off, was a light, a smile, or was it tears?
She sprang up and turned, her face one heavenly blush, as Alexina entered. Had she thought it would be he?
“Gone? Oh, Alexina, I must—I have to tell him. Ring the bell. John must go for him. After what has happened I cannot stand it that the knowledge should all be mine.”
But she was already pulling the bell-cord herself, then turned to Alexina blushing and radiant.
“I am thirty-eight years old, Alexina; I am not even young, and yet he cares for me.”
The bell had rung; both had heard the far-off sound of it, but no one answered, maid or man-servant.
She rang again. “I had no time, the words would not come, I tried to tell him,” she said pleadingly to Alexina, as if the girl were arraigning her, then suddenly dropped into the chair by the bell-cord, and with her face in her hands against its back went into violent weeping.
Alexina stood hesitant. There are times for silence. She would go and find Katy.
But she met her hurrying from the kitchen towards the parlour, the shawl over her head full of sleet and wet. She was panting and her eyes were large. Alexina was vaguely conscious of the cook, breathing excitement, somewhere back in the length of the hall, and behind her some trades-boy, his basket on his arm, his mouth gaping.
“It’s Major Rathbone,” said Katy, panting; “John ran into him coming out the carriage gate. The horses slipped and he had his umbrella down and didn’t see. I was coming from the grocery.”
“Oh,” said Alexina; “Katy, oh—”
Harriet had heard and was already in the hall and struggling with the outer door. “I can’t—it won’t—oh, Alexina, help me!”
Katy had reached the door too, and put her hand on the knob. “They’ve already started to the infirmary with him, Miss Harriet, John and that young doctor across the street, before I came in. He told them to take him there himself. He was half up, holding to the fence, before John was off the box. ‘Stop the doctor there getting in his buggy,’ he said to John, ‘and get me around to the infirmary.’”
“And the doctor—what did he say?” demanded Alexina.
“He said ‘Good Lord, man!’ and he swore just awful at John being so slow helping get him in the carriage.”
Harriet all at once was herself, perfectly controlled.
“Go get me my long cloak, please, Katy,” she said.
“Oh, Miss Harriet,” from Katy; “you ain’t thinking of goin’ out—it’s sleetin’ awful—without the carriage!”
But Harriet already had reached the stairs going for the wrap herself.
Alexina followed her. “What is it, Aunt Harriet?” she begged. “Where are you going?”
Harriet answered back from her own doorway. “To the infirmary.”
Action is the one thing always understood by youth. Alexina entirely approved. “I’ll go, too,” she said, and ran into her room to change her wrap for a darker one.
There was but one infirmary at the time in the city, and that a Catholic institution. They could walk a square and take a car to the door. Alexina, in her haste, never thought of money, but Harriet, as she came down, had her purse.
Neither spoke on the way; it was all they could do to keep umbrellas open in the fierce drive of wind and sleet. Alexina bent her head to catch breath; the sleet whipped and stung her face, the wind seized her loose cape, her light skirts, bellying them out behind her. But Harriet, ahead, tall, poised, went swiftly on, and, in the light from the street gas-post as they waited for a car, her face showed no consciousness of storm or of aught about her. Yet it was Harriet who stopped the car, who made the change, and paid the fares. The ride into town was in silence. It was Harriet who rang the bell before the infirmary building, who led the way over the icy pavement, up the wide brick walk through the grounds; it was Harriet who rang the bell at the big central door, and it was she who entered first past the little Sister who opened that door.
Not that the little Sister meant to permit it—it was against rules, she assured them, visiting hours were over. She could tell them nothing. The doctors were with the gentleman now.
But she let them in. Prison doors must have opened to Harriet that night, she would have put the little Sister aside if need be and walked in, Alexina felt that. Perhaps the little Sister felt it too. She glanced at Harriet furtively, timidly, and, murmuring something about going to see, glided away.
The two stood in the hall, Alexina gazing at the patron Saint of the place, in marble on his pedestal. After a time the little Sister returned and told them the doctor would see them presently and said something about the parlour, but Harriet shook her head.
Again they waited, the woman and the girl sitting in chairs against the painted wall, facing the Saint in his niche. The instincts of long ago arose within Alexina, and unconsciously her lips moved for comfort to herself in a prayer to the benign old Saint before her, there being nothing incongruous to her that she was using a little form of child’s prayer taught her by her Presbyterian aunt.
And still they waited, so long that Alexina felt she could not stand the silence longer, or the waiting. She looked at Harriet, who was gazing before her, her face colourless, her eyes unseeing. Alexina began to wonder if the Sister had forgotten they were there.
But at last she came stealing noiselessly back, and, following her, a young man.
Alexina recognized him at once as the young doctor she had seen going in and out the cottage, and whose name she remembered was Ransome.
Harriet arose to meet him. He was young and boyish and looked unnerved. “The others will be down in a moment—the other doctors”—he told her; “when I saw it was bad—you know I’m just beginning—I turned it over.”
His nice blue eyes looked quite distressed.
“How bad?” asked Harriet steadily.
He looked at her quite miserably, the boy, then gathered himself together.
“May I ask—I beg pardon—may I know who I am talking to?” though true to tell he knew who she was, living as he did across from her, but in his young embarrassment did not know how to say so.
The tall, beautiful woman stood a moment before him, then a slow colour came up over her throat and face. “I am Miss Blair—Major Rathbone is—”
Alexina had come close to her side and her young eyes were on the doctor’s appealingly.
He understood; doubtless he had heard the two names connected before; the affairs of the wealthy Miss Blair and the somewhat famous editor were likely to be talked over in a city the size of Louisville, or, perhaps, being young, he merely divined. His distress increased; he looked quite wretched. “It’s bad—I’m mighty sorry to be the one to tell you.”
Did she grow taller, whiter? “Are you—are the doctors still—”
“They are through for the present and coming down now.”
“Then I will go to him. Oh, but I must”—this to the horrified little Sister’s upraised hands of protest and headshake of negation.
“It’s against all rules,” ejaculated the little Sister.
Miss Blair addressed herself to the young doctor.
“Kindly take me to the room,” she said.
The abashed young fellow looked from one to the other. But he started. The little Sister, however, hastily interposing herself between Miss Blair and progress, was heard to murmur that name of authority—the Mother.
“Go and bring her,” said Harriet.
The Sister departed in haste, to return speedily with the Mother, her calm face beneath its bands mild, benignant, but inexorable.
“But I am,” returned Harriet to anything she could say. “I am going to him.”
The dominant calmness of the Mother had met its equal. Finally, in her turn, she retreated behind authority and mentioned Father Ryan.
“Oh,” said Harriet, “go and bring him.”
He came, heavy of jowl, keen and humorous of eye, but his manner disturbed, distraught, as with one whose absorption is elsewhere. Suddenly Harriet remembered that he was the intimate, the friend of Major Rathbone.
“I am going to him,” said Harriet; “nothing that you can say makes any difference.”
The Father gazed at her thoughtfully. Then he nodded. “No,” he said; “you are right; nothing will.”
Just then the two other physicians came down the stairs.
“A word with you first, gentlemen, please,” said the Father. The four men gathered at the foot of the stairway.
Watching, an outsider would have said that the priest and the young doctor were pleaders with the others for the cause of Miss Blair.
Later, the Mother herself led Harriet up the stairs and along a corridor, the young doctor following with Alexina.
“I think I—do you think I ought to go with her?” Alexina had faltered to him.
The two young things gazed at each other indeterminate. Alexina’s eyes were swimming, like a child’s, with unshed tears. Never has tragedy such epic qualities as in youth. Then he turned and led the way. “Yes,” he told her, “I think if I were you I would.”
Harriet was by the bed when they entered, gazing down on the lean, brown face of the man, whose eyes were closed. The Sister in charge, sitting on the other side, was speaking in a low voice. Had she seen fit to tell what she knew?
For Harriet turned as they entered and looked at them. Her face was set as in marble. It was cold, it was stern; only, the eyes fixed on the young doctor’s face were imploring.
“Will he wake first?” she asked.
The young fellow seemed to shrink before the majesty of her suffering. Alexina put out a hand to touch her and drew it back, afraid. If only she were not so superbly self-controlled.
“Yes, he will most likely awake,” he assured her, and must have done so even if he had not thought it.
She took off her hat, a large, festive affair with plumes and jewelled buckles, and dropped her wrap. There was a low chair near the bed. She drew it close and sat down, her eyes on the face on the pillow. Jewels gleamed in the lace of her gown, and the shining silk of its folds trailed the floor about her.
Alexina stole across to a far and shadowed corner of the room and sat down by a table. She was crying and striving to keep it noiseless.
The doctor stood irresolute, then made a movement.
“Do you have to go?” said Harriet, turning.
“No; I expect to be here in the building all night. There might come a—change.”
“Stay, please,” she asked him; “here.”
He sat down by the open fire and she turned again to the face on the pillow.
The night passed. Now and then the Sister moved noiselessly about, or the doctor came to the bedside, lifted the inert hand, laid it down, and went back to the fire.
Alexina moved from her chair to the window or to the fire and back again. Now and again she knew that she must have slept a little, her head against the table. So the night passed.
The square framed by the window sash was turning grey when there came a movement, and the eyelids of the face on the pillow lifted. Harriet was leaning over before the others, the nurse or doctor, got to the bed, and must have been there when the eyes opened. She must have seen consciousness of her presence in them, too, and possibly questioning, for she spoke rapidly, eagerly, like one who had said the thing over and over in readiness for the moment, though her voice shook. “You said you loved me from your soul, and, living or dead, would go on loving and wanting my love?”
There seemed no wonder in the voice replying, only content. There was even the usual touch of humour in his reply. “And will go on wanting your love,” he said.
“But I am here to tell you how I love you,” she returned.
The room was still, like death. Then in the man’s voice: “Is this pity, Harriet?”
Her voice hurried on. “And how, living or dead, I will go on loving and wanting you.”
It was no pity that trembled in her voice, it was passion. He moved.
After a time he spoke again. It was to call her name, to say it as to himself. This time he knew it was love this woman was talking of, not pity.
“I could not bear it that you should not know,” she hurried on to tell him. “I made them let me come to you.”
“You know then, Harriet; they have told you?”
She was human; the sound that broke from her was the cry of a rent soul.
The doctor, who had gone back to the mantel, crouched over the fire. The Sister seemed to shrink into the shadows beyond the narrow bed. Alexina clenched her hands, her head on her arms outstretched on the table.
But Harriet had regained herself. “I am here to ask you something. May I be married to you—now—at once, I mean?”
His response was not audible, only her reply. “Oh, surely you will. For the rest of my life—to have been—you will give me this, won’t you?”
There was a quick movement from him, and a sound of warning from the nurse who moved forward out of the shadow.
Material things seemed to come back to Harriet. Alarm sprang into her voice. “Shall I go away?” she asked the nurse, even timidly.
The answer came from him. “No; oh, no. Since it may be for so little time I may ask it of you; stay with me, Harriet.”
She turned to the doctor.
“Stay,” he told her, poor boy, new to these things.
“Then give me my way,” Harriet begged, turning back again. She had forgotten the others already. “You said that after what happened between you and Austen you wanted it known how you felt to me. Haven’t I the same right and more, since it was my brother who said it, to want the world to know how I feel to you?”
They could feel the laugh in his reply. “The world, the world, as if you ever cared for what the world—come, be honest, Harriet; you say this in the generous desire of making it up to me.”
“But I do—I do care. I could clap my hands, I could glory to cry it from the house-tops, how I care, how I am here, on my knees, begging you will marry me.”
“You are kneeling? Yes? Kneel then; even that, since it brings you closer. But let’s not talk of this now. I’m not used to the knowledge of the first yet. Will you put your hand in mine, Harriet?”
The girl over in the shadow felt that her heart would break. And this was love. The great, sad thing was love!
He was talking again. “I never thought, surely, to be a stick of a man like this. I could have made a royal lover, Harriet. A man’s blood at forty is like wine at its fulness. My head—won’t lift—God, that it should come to find me like this! yet, kiss me, will you, Harriet?”
But a moment and she returned to her pleading. “They will send me away from you, you know, I have no right to be here—unless you give it to me?”
Was she using this, the inference, to move him?
For he caught it at once. “You came—I see, I see.”
But she had fled from her position. “It’s not that, as if I cared, as if you thought I cared, it’s because I want to have been—”
But the other had stuck. “Is the doctor there?” he asked.
The young fellow came to the bed.
“I would like to see Father Ryan,” said the Major.
The priest came. The two were intimates. He listened to the instructions, the exigencies of the case to be met by him. A license was necessary. “And try and get Miss Blair’s brother to accompany you, and to come here with you; you will make it all clear to him.”
Harriet was looking up at the priest, whom she saw as the friend of the man she loved. “And you will come back and marry us yourself, won’t you?” she asked.
He was looking down at her. Even after the long night, in the cold light of a winter dawn, and in the garishness of an evening gown in daylight, she was triumphantly beautiful. With her hand on the smooth brown hand of the Major, she sat and looked up at the cassocked priest. The marble of her face had given way to a divine light and radiance.
He looked down on her.
“I will come,” he told her.
It was some hours before he was back. The young doctor had gone and come. Dawn had broadened into a grey and sullen day. Breakfast was sent up and placed in an adjoining room for Harriet and Alexina. The girl tried to eat, if only to seem grateful to the Sister bringing it, but Harriet wandered about the room, and, when Alexina brought her a cup of coffee, shook her head. She watched the door until the doctors were gone and she might return to him, then went in and sat by him again. His eyes were closed, but his hand, seeking as she sat down, found hers. Later, as the priest returned, the gaze from the pillow turned to the door eagerly. Austen was not with him. The face steeled.
The Mother came in, and at a sign from the priest they gathered around, Alexina, the young doctor, the nurse.
With his hand in Harriet’s the Major followed to the end.
Nor was he going to die. There was deeper knowledge of life yet for the woman by him to learn.
Afterward, Doctor Ransome drove Alexina home in his buggy, where she and the voluble, excited Katy packed some things for Harriet.
“And Miss Harriet never to let us hear a word, and Maggie and me never closing our eyes all the night, Miss Alexina,” Katy said.
And Harriet Blair a person usually so observant and punctilious about everything!
“And Mr. Blair, he asked where you were, Miss Harriet and you, when he came, and then he dressed and went to the party he was going to take you to, as if nothing had happened. And the Father came this morning and talked, but Mr. Blair hardly said a word, and when they left the priest went one way and Mr. Blair he went the other.”
Doctor Ransome came in his buggy and took Alexina back. On reaching the infirmary they found that Major Rathbone’s sister from Bardstown, who had been sent for, had arrived. Alexina had not known that he had a sister until she found her in the room next to the Major’s, with Harriet.
She was childlike and small and was looking at Harriet, helpless and frightened. She was, it proved, twenty-three years old, and a widow with two children.
“And Stevie takes care of us,” she explained. “Stevie” was the Major; “us” was herself and the babies.
She had brought both the babies. “I couldn’t leave them and come, you know,” she said.
One of them lay on the bed, asleep, a little chap four years old, his coat unfastened, his hair tumbled. The other, the younger, asleep too, lay on the mother’s knee, Harriet regarding him. He was aquiline, lean and handsome, baby as he was, like a little deer hound.
“His name is Stevie,” said Stephen’s sister.
Harriet looked up from the child to the mother, almost jealously. “Then he is mine, too; I have some part in him too, since his name is Stephen.”