Slowly as they seemed to creep, yet the miles were going by. Freeport--Lynbrook--Jamaica--like a woman in a dream she reached the bridge and a moment later looked down upon the long belt of lights winking in the rain that was New York.
And here, on the very apex of the bridge, came the most heart-rending moment of the run, for the little boy began to cough, and for two or three frightful minutes the women hung over him, speechless with terror, and knowing that at any second the exhausted little body might succumb to the strain. Blindly, as with a long, choked cry he sank back again, Rachael went back to her wheel. Third Avenue--Fifth Avenue--Forty-second Street tore by; they were running straight down toward Washington Arch as the clocks everywhere struck midnight. The wide street was deserted in the rain, it shone like a mirror, reflecting long pendants of light.
They were turning the corner; she was out of the car, and had glanced at the familiar old house. Wet, exhausted, fired by a passion that made her feel curiously light and sure, Rachael put her arms about her child, and carried him up the steps. Mary had preceded her, the door was opened; a dazed and frightened maid was looking at her.
Then she was crossing the familiar hall; lights were in the library, and Warren in the library, somebody with him, but Rachael only caught a glimpse of the old familiar attitude: he was sitting in a straight-backed chair, his legs crossed, and one firm hand grasping a silk-clad ankle as he intently listened to whatever was being said.
"Warren!" she said in a voice that those who heard it remembered all their lives. "It's Derry! He's hurt--he's dying, I think! Can you--can you save him?" And with a great burst of tears she gave up the child.
"My God--what is it!" said Warren Gregory on his feet, and with Derry in his arms, even as he spoke. For a second the tableau held: Rachael, agonized, her beautiful face colorless, and dripping with rain, her husband staring at her as if he could not credit his senses, the child's limp body in his arms, yet not quite freed from hers. In the background were the whitefaced servants and the gray-headed doctor upon whose conversation the newcomers had so abruptly broken.
"We've just brought him up from Clark's Hills!" Rachael said.
"From Clark's Hills--YOU!"
His look, the dear familiar look of solicitude and concern, tore her to the soul.
"There was nothing else to do!" she faltered.