Cooney made his way through a growth of the thick, wet buck brush, then between white files of the quaking aspen, and at last into the heavier wooded forest where his feet slipped and slid on the yielding pine needles as he climbed. The hill lengthened before her in gradual ascents, broken by terraces, and the way was rough with bowlders and fallen trees and the clutching tangle of undergrowth. But the mist, receding before her, revealed aisles of the wood farther on that allured her. She would be thorough. Ahead of her were ruddy, yellow hints of the sun, striking down through the green arches of the forest.
At last she saw that she had reached the summit of the hill. "It is the place," she said, then reined in and dismounted by a clump of bushes. She found herself stiffened by the cold, and a sudden fear of failing force seized her. She stamped on the ground until she felt warmth in her feet again, and the stirred blood mounting through her. She drew a great breath and straightened her body with a consciousness of its strength and wealth of life. "It is the place," she repeated.
CHAPTER XXXI
THE MISSION OF EWING
IN a dingy little bedroom of a dingy little hotel in one of the lesser avenues of New York Ewing sat waiting for his hour. He had sealed his letter to Mrs. Laithe with the feeling that this was the last intelligible word he could say to anyone. Henceforth he must be silent; refuse reasons. He must let them devise reasons for him. Any but the true reason would suffice.
When darkness came on he went out into the noisy street, mailing the letter as he passed through the hotel office. Then, by unfamiliar thoroughfares he made his way to Ninth Street and resumed his old vigil in front of Teevan's house.
There were lights in the house, both above and below. The thing was not, then, to be attempted at the moment. He walked for an hour through squalid streets to the west and came back to his post. The house was still alight. Teevan, apparently, was entertaining. He watched but a moment, then returned to his hotel and went to bed. He could be patient, and he must be thorough. Before extinguishing his light he made sure that he had not lost what was now his most important possession: a key to Teevan's door. Teevan had bestowed it on him the year before, in order that he might obtain books during the little man's absence from town. Ewing had forgotten the key until he set on his present mission; then he had perceived a use for it.
He fell asleep, despite the recurrent tumult of elevated trains outside his window; fell asleep thinking of Teevan. There was no bitterness in his heart toward the little man. It was only necessary that he die.
He kept closely to his room the next day, wishing not to be recognized by any of his acquaintances, and he was at his post early in the evening. This time the house was dark. Teevan was out, but he would return. So he paced back and forth through Ninth Street, going only so far as would let him keep the house in view. He felt no impatience. It was his last work, and he could bide the time when it might be well done. A little after midnight two men entered the street from Fifth Avenue, strolling leisurely in the warm June night, and ascended the steps of the Teevan house. Ewing felt a slight tingling of relief when he recognized Teevan, but then he saw the other take a key from his pocket, and he knew that this would be Teevan's son. They went in together, and the watcher left his post. He must have Teevan alone in the house.
He walked on with strange echoes from another time—from another world, it seemed, sounding in his ears. The sight of Teevan, the tones of his voice, faintly heard, seemed to awaken him from some dream in which he walked, awaken him to a time when the little man was his good friend. He felt a sudden nausea, but then he raised his eyes to the Bartell house opposite and was himself again. He crossed the street and stood a moment before the door, seeing his lady there, seeing her again as he had seen her that night in Teevan's grasp, striving with Teevan, weakly, but with the killing light in her eyes. The vision convinced him. The other time had been the time of dream. He had not been awake until now.