Читать книгу The Game and the Candle - Eleanor M. Ingram - Страница 7

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"The road you called, and I believed to be, an unblazed trail through a grave forest, I am beginning to see is just the old sordid, musty Bridge of Sighs across which common malefactors are led," wrote John Allard to Robert three months after his departure from Sun-Kist. "But if we can agree with Browning's dictum, there is a certain virtue simply in keeping on at a task assumed, even if the end be questionable. And I am keeping on. Do not fancy I am saying this to trouble you, or in weak regret. All is going better than we dared hope, as you know; and I see no danger near, at present. No; it is only that I have been fearing I gave you some edged doctrines; do not close your hand upon them, for they cut. You can not write to me, of course, since you do not know where I am. Nor shall I myself write again, even with this guarded and unsigned precaution. When this venture ends, I am going away from America; I think I shall enlist in France's Foreign Legion. Not because I am afraid, but because I want to work. Yet, in spite of success, it seems to me that, like Saxon Harold, I hear a cry in the night: 'Sanguelac, the arrow, the arrow!'"

There was nothing in the quiet, sun-filled, little hut nestled on the mountain-side, to indicate that here rested one end of the Ponte degli Sospiri. Yet to one of the two men here at bay, the dark bridge arched away as a thing visible.

A siege had been held there all the June afternoon, until now this grateful lull had fallen,—a siege whose tale was punctuated with the snap of bullets, the crash of loosened stones down the cliff, and the shouts of men below. No one yet had ventured on the steep, narrow path winding up to the hut, although there was but one defender, and so far the battle had been bloodless. But neither the big Irishman leaning by the door, nor John Allard, lying helpless on a rough cot, had any doubt of the final result. They were simply waiting for the end to come.

"Desmond, have you hurt any of them?" Allard asked suddenly, rousing himself from a reverie bordering on stupor.

"I have not," answered the other in accents just touched with Hibernian softness. "But I am thinking they will not come up until dusk. Bird shot scatters."

"Our own men have gone safely?"

"They have. And if you had not slipped through that hole in the old floor and broken your ankle—"

Allard raised himself on his elbow. Fever lent an artificial brightness to his firm young face and shadowed gray eyes, the waving chestnut hair clung boyishly around a forehead which had acquired one straight line between the brows during the five months since he had left Sun-Kist.

"You should not have stayed, Desmond," he said earnestly. "You can not help me; I have my own way out of this. You must go now, at least, and try the mountain. I ask you to go."

"And if I do, it must be at dusk. Look out that door; not a cloud or a shade—and me with a hundred yards of bare mountain-side to cross. Lie easy, sir."

"Desmond!"

"Oh, it's a word slipped! Old times are close enough for their ways to come to my tongue in the rush."

Allard shook his head, but sank back upon the pillow and let his gaze go out the open door opposite. Far below, the silver and azure Hudson widened into the Tappan Zee, set in purple and emerald hills which curved softly away to the distant outposts of the Palisades. Fair and tranquil, warmly palpitating under the summer sunshine, the scene was cruel in its placid indifference to the struggle here upon the cliff-like mountain. The very breeze that fluttered in brought taunting perfumes of cedar and blossom from a country-side out of reach; poised airily between earth and sky, a snowy sea-gull flaunted its unvalued liberty. Sighing, the Californian dropped the curtain of his lashes before a world no longer his. He had been so near safety, the arrow had been held so long upon the cord, that disaster came now with a double keenness of stroke.

"Desmond," he said, after a pause, "we have nothing to do with old times or titles. I can trust your will, I know; but do not let your memory betray me. I mean, words must not slip. I hope you are going to get out of this safely; I can not, of course. After my—capture," a curious expression flickered across his face, "no matter how things end, you may count that I will say nothing of you or the others. Will you, at all times in the future, remember that I am just Leroy?"

"I will," the big man replied briefly. "And the others don't know anything."

"No; there is only you. You it would not help if the truth were made public; it would only excite more attention. You yourself do not want your former record connected with your stay here. If you escape, you will be free and comparatively rich; leave me my secret, Desmond; I shall have nothing else."

"You needn't worry about me," Desmond reassured, his eyes on the ribbon of path that was visible. "It might be better, I'm thinking, to do the worrying about how you'll come out of this."

"Fiat justicia," Allard returned, with a cool endurance quite free from bitterness. "Or, more intelligibly, I must pay for my cakes and ale. Only carry your part through, and do not talk."

"You needn't worry. There's a man around that big boulder down there! Will I have to shoot bird seed at his legs, I wonder?"

"Not if you can avoid!"

"Oh, I'm not playing at it; rest easy. And don't fear they'll be believing it's you. When they find me gone and you not able to stand, they'll guess who was shooting. I'll put all the guns beyond your reaching them, to help, before I go to-night."

"No!"

The swift monosyllable fell with an energy that brought Desmond's glance at once to the speaker.

"I shall want my revolver," Allard added more quietly. "I might need it."

"Just so," assented the other, regarding him oddly, and presently returned to his guard of the door.

There was a long silence. Gradually the fluffily piled clouds in the west became tinged with ruddy gold, clouds which bore a fanciful resemblance to Elysian mountain peaks, as if heaped so in sport by some imitative baby Titan who had patterned them from the hills below. Sunset was at hand, and from its brightness Allard wearily averted his face. Suffering, mental and physical, keyed his nerves to exquisite sensitiveness; a passionate desire for darkness and silence possessed him.

Suddenly the roaring crash of the huge shotgun set the cottage vibrating, and echoed heavily back and forth among the cliffs.

"It's only to scare them," explained Desmond, as his companion started up. "But I doubt they will wait past dusk. And we needed just one week more!"

"You mean they will rush the place by daylight? You will go now?"

"I need the dusk more than they do. Still, I won't wait long. You—shall I get you water?—you moved too quick!"

"It is nothing," Allard panted. But he drank gratefully from the tin dipper, nevertheless, and in returning it searched with gentler eyes the hard, intelligent countenance of the giver. "It is nothing I can not face, all this, if I can be certain you will keep silence."

"I will," he said, and walked back to the door in cautious vigilance.

Allard lay still. Evening: Theodora would be on the veranda in her pretty dinner gown, perhaps with a flower tucked over her little ear in the Spanish fashion she mimicked, if this were home. Aunt Rose would be reading in her favorite chair, Robert lounging near them and pouring out his usual flood of sparkling gaiety and nonsense. Allard smiled tenderly and with a touch of defiance; after all, he had won the battle fought for them, had carried out the task set, before to-day's ruin overtook him. Moreover, he had his own way of escape, resolved upon since the first. He almost could be content.

"It's growing dark," broke in Desmond's voice after a time. "I'm thinking they'll be making that rush mighty soon. I'd give something to take you along, instead of having to climb like a cat up the bluff."

Allard roused himself.

"Not possible! You should have gone with the rest instead of being here now." He held out his hot hand for the other's clasp. "Good-by, Desmond. Without you this thing would never have worked at all."

"It's not so. Many a time this game has been tried and has fallen through half-way; and it's not thousands are made at it. You did it, with the gentleman's brain and knowledge and wit. Not that it matters now."

"Not very much. You are forgetting my revolver."

"No, I am not forgetting. You will not need it." He turned away to add the last one to the pile of weapons in the opposite corner.

Allard rose on his arm, his eyes flashing wide and keen.

"You have no idea what I need, Desmond. Give me that revolver."

"You would shoot no one, and it would be of no use."

"Desmond, we have been friends; give me that."

"I can't," he answered sullenly.

"Why not?"

"Because I know for what you want it, sir."

Allard flung back his head and confronted the defiant face opposite with the fevered anger of his own.

"And if so, is it your affair? Have you, you who have led your life, grown sentimental? You, who know from where I come and to where I am going,—you will interfere? You are wasting our time; give me my revolver, and go."

But the other made no move, although sending an anxious glance through the doorway.

"One gets out of prison," he said obstinately, "as I've tried myself. But that that you mean—there's no coming back. You are over young for that, sir."

"You have been paid for helping me," Allard retorted, his voice savage with pain, "not for teaching me philosophy. Go take your liberty, if you can, and leave me mine. There is one door out for me, and one key. I trusted you; I might have kept the thing with me if I had imagined this."

Desmond flushed, but turned coolly.

"I'll go, it's time. If I was paid for helping, I gave the help. I never was paid for this you are asking."

"Desmond, Desmond, you leave me so!"

He turned on the threshold, a square, obstinate figure against the violet twilight.

"I'd never do it," he said quite gently, "if I didn't know you'd thank me some day."

"Desmond—"

"Good-by, sir."

"Desmond—"

The doorway was empty; the evening serenata of a robin filled the hush. Allard's head sank on his arm in the darkest moment of the last somber months.

But presently he looked up again. Still dressed as when the accident had happened a few hours before, he possessed a tiny box of cartridges, and only the width of the room separated him from his desire. He impulsively tossed aside the blanket and slipped to the floor.

The fall drew a gasp of pain. All before faded to insignificance beside the anguish of movement. It was not the ankle only; the injury had gone farther than that. Colorless, catching his breath with difficulty, Allard dragged himself inch by inch toward the goal.

Desmond was almost forgotten when the first shot on the mountain-side rang out. Startled from the mists of suffering, Allard paused an instant. Then as a very fusillade reverberated among the cliffs, he toiled on with redoubled haste. They would come next for him.

It had a pearl and silver handle, that revolver. He had treasured it because it was a gift from Robert, and a souvenir too frequently duplicated to betray his identity. Now the pearl shone a glistening spot in the surrounding grayness, beckoning, tantalizing. It was so far across the room, so very far!

Shots again! He struggled yet more desperately, and the resulting pang brought waves of faintness above his head. If he could only rest, so.

Some one was shouting, half exultantly, half fearfully, and other voices replied in equal excitement. Some one was killed, they were saying, had fallen from the cliff. Desmond, perhaps? Allard roused himself fiercely and saw with gratitude how near the coveted object lay. A little farther, only a little; but it cost.

The rush and patter of feet grew louder,—the steady approach of the hunters. It hardly mattered, for the cool white handle was in the grasp of his outstretched hand. He had won, won doubly. He had accomplished his task, and he held the key to the door. Robert's face leaned toward him, warm with relief and praise; Theodora was in the room, bringing fragrances of sandalwood and rose—

Once more he drove back the mists and dragged the revolver to him, smiling, but with knit brows.