Chaos! However one looked at it, chaos! Only one fact was clear—that Carmel knew the whole story and might communicate the same, if ever her brain cleared and she could be brought to reveal the mysteries of that hour. Did I desire such a consummation? Only God, who penetrates more deeply than ourselves into the hidden regions of the human heart, could tell. I only know that the fear and expectation of such an outcome made my anguish for the next two weeks.
Would she live? Would she die? The question was on every tongue. The crisis of her disease was approaching, and the next twenty-four hours would decide her fate, and in consequence, my own, if not her brother Arthur’s. As I contemplated the suspense of these twenty-four hours, I revolted madly for the first time against the restrictions of my prison. I wanted air, movement, the rush into danger, which my horse or my automobile might afford. Anything which would drag my thoughts from that sick room, and the anticipated stir of that lovely form into conscious life and suffering. Her eyes—I could see her eyes wakening upon the world again, after her long wandering in the unknown and unimaginable intricacies of ungoverned thought and delirious suggestion. Eyes of violet colour and infinite expression; eyes which would make a man’s joy if they smiled on him in innocence; but which, as I well knew, had burned more than once, in her short but strenuous life, with fiery passions; and might, at the instant of waking, betray this same unholy gleam under the curious gaze of the unsympathetic ones set in watch over her.
What would her first word be? Whither would her first thought fly? To Adelaide or to me; to Arthur or to her own frightened and appalled self? I maddened as I dwelt upon the possibilities of this moment. I envied Arthur; I envied the attendants; I envied even the servants in the house. They would all know sooner than I. Carmel! Carmel!
Sending for Clifton, I begged him to keep himself in communication with the house, or with the authorities. He promised to do what he could; then, perceiving the state I was in, he related all he knew of present conditions. No one was allowed in the sick room but the nurse and the doctor. Even Arthur was denied admission, and was wearing himself out in his own room as I was wearing myself out here, in restless inactivity. He expected her to sink and never to recover consciousness, and was loud in his expressions of rebellion against the men who dared to keep him from her bedside when her life was trembling in the balance. But the nurse had hopes and so had the doctor. As for Carmel’s looks, they were greatly changed, but beautiful still in spite of the cruel scar left by her fall against the burning bars of her sister’s grate. No delirium disturbed the rigid immobility in which she now lay. I could await her awakening with quiet confidence in the justice of God.
Thus Clifton, in his ignorance.
The day was a bleak one, dispiriting in itself even to those who could go about the streets and lose themselves in their tasks and round of duties. To me it was a dead blank, marked by such interruptions as necessarily took place under the prison routine. The evening hours which followed them were no better. The hands on my watch crawled. When the door finally opened, it came as a shock. I seemed to be prepared for anything but the termination of my suspense. I knew that it was Clifton who entered, but I could not meet his eye. I dug my nails into my palms, and waited for his first word. When it came, I felt my spirits go down, down—I had thought them at their lowest ebb before. He hesitated, and I started up:
“Tell me,” I cried. “Carmel is dead!”
“Not dead,” said he, “but silly. Her testimony is no more to be relied upon than that of any other wandering mind.”
XXII
“BREAK IN THE GLASS!”
This inundation of mistempered humour Rests by you only to be qualified.