“Be wise, master!” cried that one who had restrained me before. “Think of what you do!”
The man's hand on my wrist, and the earnest voice of him, brought me to myself. A vast calm took me, as a storm in its double fury beats flat the surface of the sea. I turned my back and walked to the window.
“Have him away, then!” cried I. “Have him out of my sight, or I'll tear him to rags and ribbons where he lies!”
CHAPTER XXVI—THE VICTOR AND THE SPOILS
FOR all the cry and call of politics, and folk to see me whom I would not see, that night, and throughout the following day—and even though the latter were one of election Fate to decide for the town's mastery—I never stirred from Blossom's side. She, poor child! was as one desolate, dazed with the blow that had been dealt her. She lay on her pillow, silent, and with the stricken face that told of the heart-blight fallen upon her.
Nor was I in much more enviable case, although gifted of a rougher strength to meet the shock. Indeed, I was taught by a despair that preyed upon me, how young Van Flange had grown to be the keystone of my arch of single hope, now fallen to the ground. Blossom's happiness had been my happiness, and when her breast was pierced, my own brightness of life began to bleed away. Darkness took me in the folds of it as in a shroud; I would have found the grave kinder, but I must remain to be what prop and stay I might to Blossom.
While I sat by my girl's bed, there was all the time a peril that kept plucking at my sleeve in a way of warning. My nature is of an inveterate kind that, once afire and set to angry burning, goes on and on in ever increasing flames like a creature of tow, and with me helpless to smother or so much as half subdue the conflagration. I was so aware of myself in that dangerous behalf that it would press upon me as a conviction, even while I held my girl's hand and looked into her vacant eye, robbed of a last ray of any peace to come, that young Van Flange must never stray within my grasp. It would bring down his destruction; it would mean red hands for me and nothing short of murder. And, so, while I waited by Blossom's side, and to blot out the black chance of it, I sent word for Inspector McCue.
The servants, on that day of awful misery, conveyed young Van Flange from the room. When he had been revived, and his injuries dressed—for his head bled from a gash made by the door, and his shoulder had been dislocated—he was carried from the house by the brougham that brought him, and which still waited at the gate. No one about me owned word of his whereabouts. It was required that he be found, not more for his sake than my own, and his destinies disposed of beyond my reach.