CHAPTER XL
GENTLEMEN ALL
Chisholm Allen had come to the end of a long tether. He was drunk. Not with the amiable jollity of the youthful tippler, nor with the heavy, fatuous oblivion of the sot, but with the drunkenness that marks the vicious rebellion of the nerve-cell against the prolonged excitation of an intoxicant—the dreadful revenge wherein the outraged brain summons the distorted imagination to fill the victim's landscape with uncouth and demoniacal visitants.
For a long fortnight, at the Springs, with a couple of cronies, he had defied convention and strained the tolerance, which had countenanced past escapades because he was an Allen, to the breaking-point. Only when revelry had sunken to deep debauch had friends been able to bring him to the city, where he had been bestowed in a room at the club to await returning soberness. That night, however, when the friendly guard had relaxed, Chilly had awakened to horrid visions. At first he had known them for creations of his drunken fantasy, but they had multiplied in numbers and horror till they had broken down the frail bulwark of remaining reason and obsessed him with the sense of reality—uncanny nightmares from some formless abysm, shuddering mistakes of nature, mingling in a monstrous extravaganza that crowded about to menace him.
With a scream Chilly burst from the room and ran along an upper corridor to the brightly-lighted reading-room. It was deserted at that hour—but not for him, for the visitants from which he fled pursued him there! They ringed him about, clutching at him. Livid and shaking, he seized a heavy iron poker from the hearth and crouching in a corner, beat off the imaginary assailants.
It was upon this spectacle that the agitated steward had come, called by a frightened bell-boy, and as the theatre stood opposite, he had hastily sent thither, as the likeliest spot in which to find some habitué of the Club who might assume charge of the situation.
Two other club-members stood nonplussed and disconcerted on the threshold of the room when Harry Sevier and Brent entered, with the steward behind them. In the livid face of the boy at bay, the staring distempered eyes, the gripped, impromptu weapon, Harry read the fact. He spoke to him soothingly, but the frenzied brain did not recognise him. To Chilly's imagination the friendly, familiar faces took on the baleful character of the gibbering things by which he was beset. He sprang up, slashing frantically with the iron, panting indistinguishable words. Thus for a moment the writhing images fell back—only one of the iron lizards that formed the andirons suddenly came to life and on bat's-wings soared to a great marble bust that sat on a shelf above the fireplace, where it perched and spat down at him.
Chilly leaped up at it, dealing it blow after blow with the poker—then laughed wildly to see it suddenly waver and topple forward. So it seemed to him, but an exclamation of dismayed warning broke from Harry's lips; it was the heavy marble itself, its too frail support shattered by the attack, which was falling. He sprang forward.
But he reached the spot too late. The great bust came crashing from its height full upon Chilly's breast, and with a choked cry he went down beneath it.
The others rushed to him and between them the massive stone was lifted from the broken body. "Call up a doctor," Harry ordered the steward. "Get the nearest—tell him to hurry; Mr. Allen is badly hurt." To the rest he said, "Nothing must be known, as to how this happened, outside this room. It was an accident, remember, nothing more. The shelf was weak and the bust fell."
When the doctor came in, the crushed form lay upon a couch hastily improvised from chair-cushions. Blood was welling from the pale lips. He made a hasty examination, then looked up and shook his head.
"Better fetch his father and mother," he said, "and as quickly as possible."
"I will go," volunteered Brent. "My car is at the theatre. I can do it in twenty minutes." He went out quickly, while the man of medicine opened his case and busied himself with restoratives.
To Harry, who stood watching with the others, it seemed that these were to be of no avail, but after a sensible interval Chilly opened his eyes. He gazed at the professional face so near—at the other shocked countenances grouped about. He saw the bust lying on its side.
"I'm—sober now," he gasped. "I was—seeing things, eh? But I seem to be—hurt. What's the matter?"
"The marble fell and struck you," said Harry.
A spasm of pain caught Chilly and he groaned. "I remember," he said, and then, after a pause, "Am I—badly off?"
"I'm afraid so," said the doctor.
The pity in the tone conveyed its message. A tremor ran over Chilly's face. There was a long moment's silence.
"Have I—much time?"
"Not very much," answered the other gently.
Chilly caught a breath that was half a sob. "Poor little Nancy!" he whispered.
He looked up at the men who stood about him, "I would like—" he said, hesitatingly but clearly, "I would be glad if some—explanation might be made of this—occurrence—which would not involve unnecessary pain to the Duchess. Perhaps that is—impossible. But I would—be grateful—"
One of the younger men leaned beside him. It was Lee Carter, his closest friend, who had brought him that afternoon from the Springs. "Dear old chap!" he said, brokenly. "I was standing just under it. You saw it topple and jumped to save me! That is how it happened! Every one of us saw it."
A wan smile touched the whitening lips, "Gentlemen all!" said Chilly, and closed his eyes.
He lay silent then—he was breathing with increasing difficulty. At length there was the sound of a motor halting outside, and Harry and the rest went out.
In the quiet of the room the door opened upon Judge and Mrs. Allen. She was deadly pale, her face frozen with anguish. She knelt beside the prostrate figure and took the cold hand of her son in hers.
"Chilly!" she cried. "My poor, poor boy!"
His eyes opened. He seemed, in that last fading instant, to see only her. "Duchess!" he whispered, and with the word the light died in his face. "Duchess!"
Mrs. Allen looked at the Judge's quivering countenance with dull blank eyes, that saw two great tears suddenly detach themselves and roll down his pale cheeks. He took a step toward her.
"Charlotte—" he stammered. "Charlotte!"
There was in the shaking voice something that pierced her agony, a tone that she had not heard on his lips for many, many long years—an echo of accents that she had known when she was a bride. She gazed at him an instant voicelessly.
Then all at once her face broke up and a wild cry tore itself upward from her heart. It was not the voice now of cold and placid scorn, but that of the real woman—the eternal voice of Rachel weeping for her children. The sword of overwhelming tragedy had stripped off the protecting cicatrice of pride and arrogant resentment and bared the lonely soul beneath, that in this shuddering instant groped wildly for human comfort.
The Judge bent down and clasped her, and there, above the body of Chilly, for the first time since the son who lay dead before them had been born, she lay in her husband's arms, her face turned against his breast.