XXII
CARRICK IS KING
"Where is Carrick?" Her question came from the thick copse in which she was concealed. "You have had news, I know," she said, stepping into view and glancing searchingly into his troubled countenance. "Is he wounded?" He could have gathered her into his arms and kissed her as she stood before him, but that the very air seemed charged with impending disaster. As gently as brevity would permit, he told her of Carrick's fate. Together they rode swiftly back to where Carrick lay, fighting his last triumphant adversary, Death himself.
"No Lunnon sights to see," he muttered in his delirium; "no concert songs to'ear.... Ah, Meg, you was cruel 'ard on poor Tod, but damn you, I loves you still."
"A woman betrayed him," she said. Carter nodded a grim assent. Her lips quivered. Her eyes brimmed to the brink with priceless womanly sympathy. "Perhaps," she said rising and turning away, "perhaps he wouldn't care for us to know."
Carter drew her back gently. "I don't think he would mind—if you knew. Poor chap, his has certainly been a hard fate."
Responding to the appeal in their hearts, which penetrated the numbing faculties, Carrick, in one final effort, threw off the shackles of Death and stood free for a season. His eyes opened at first without recognition for the pair bending over him. Then a gradual joy warmed the cooling embers of his life.
"'Ighness," he cried; the neighborhood of Death stripped his speech to its native crudeness. "'Ighness, a man carries to 'is grave the face of one woman in 'is 'eart. Hi knows that much to me sorrow. Captain, 'ere, beggin' your pardon, loves you, but daren't sye so for fear of 'Is Majesty. You don't love the King, you love Captain Carter. God bless 'im, 'e's the best man ever breathed. For Gawd's sake, 'Ighness, don't let 'im carry your sweet face to the grave with 'im unless your love goes with hit. You two was made for each other."
As a blade loses its sharpness from continuous wear, so dulled the eyes of Carrick in his combat with Death. In the bitterness of his strife he struggled to his elbow. Who can tell of the range of one's soul or the might thereof? On the brink of Eternity, Life wrestled with Death. The body was to be bared of the soul. Was the soul to be stripped of the associations it had formed in this existence? Might it not also strive for a continuance of its entity even as the man struggled for further living? Does the soul return to a nebulous state without further initiate perceptions after a life—a span—of activity? Was it merely recollections, or did his desperate spirit revisit the route of its life in a fruitless flight from Death? His voice came from far away, and what he said showed that he was at least living over the older days.