第64章 BOOK III:THE HEART OF MAN(17)

He won't be the only unseen listener.I've made my own arrangements with Miss Scott.If he feels the need of watching her and his brother Oswald,I feel the need of watching him.""You take a burden of intolerable weight from my shoulders.Now Ishall feel easier about that interview.But I should like to ask you this:Do you feel justified in this continued surveillance of a man who has so frequently,and with such evident sincerity,declared his innocence?""I do that.If he's as guiltless as he says he is,my watchfulness won't hurt him.If he's not,then,Mr.Challoner,I've but one duty;to match his strength with my patience.That man is the one great mystery of the day,and mysteries call for solution.At least,that's the way a detective looks at it.""May Heaven help your efforts!"

"I shall need its assistance,"was the dry rejoinder.Sweetwater was by no means blind to the difficulties awaiting him.

XXXII

TELL ME,TELL IT ALL

The day was a grey one,the first of the kind in weeks.As Doris stepped into the room where Oswald sat,she felt how much a ray of sunshine would have encouraged her and yet how truly these leaden skies and this dismal atmosphere expressed the gloom which soon must fall upon this hopeful,smiling man.

He smiled because any man must smile at the entrance of so lovely a woman,but it was an abstracted smile,and Doris,seeing it,felt her courage falter for a moment,though her steps did not,nor her steady compassionate gaze.Advancing slowly,and not answering because she did not hear some casual remark of his,she took her stand by his side and then slowly and with her eyes on his face,sank down upon her knees,still without speaking,almost without breathing.

His astonishment was evident,for her air was strange and full of presage,-as,indeed,she had meant it to be.But he remained as silent as she,only reached out his emaciated hand and,laying it on her head,smiled again but this time far from abstractedly.

Then,as he saw her cheeks pale in terror of the task before her,he ventured to ask gently:

"What is the matter,child?So weary,eh?Nothing worse than that,I hope.""Are you quite strong this morning?Strong enough to listen to my troubles;strong enough to bear your own if God sees fit to send them?"came hesitatingly from her lips as she watched the effect of each word,in breathless anxiety.

"Troubles?There can be but one trouble for me,"was his unexpected reply."That I do not fear -will not fear in my hour of happy recovery.So long as Edith is well -Doris!Doris!You alarm me.

Edith is not ill;-not ill?"

The poor child could not answer save with her sympathetic look and halting,tremulous breath;and these signs,he would not,could not read,his own words had made such an echo in his ears.

"Ill!I cannot imagine Edith ill.I always see her in my thoughts,as I saw her on that day of our first meeting;a perfect,animated woman with the joyous look of a glad,harmonious nature.Nothing has ever clouded that vision.If she were ill I would have known it.We are so truly one that -Doris,Doris,you do not speak.You know the depth of my love,the terror of my thoughts.Is Edith ill?"The eyes gazing wildly into his,slowly left his face and raised themselves aloft,with a sublime look.Would he understand?Yes,he understood,and the cry which rang from his lips stopped for a moment the beating of more than one heart in that little cottage.

"Dead!"he shrieked out,and fell back fainting in his chair,his lips still murmuring in semi-unconsciousness,"Dead!dead!"Doris sprang to her feet,thinking of nothing but his wavering,slipping life till she saw his breath return,his eyes refill with light.Then the horror of what was yet to come -the answer which must be given to the how she saw trembling on his lips,caused her to sink again upon her knees in an unconscious appeal for strength.

If that one sad revelation had been all!

But the rest must be told;his brother exacted it and so did the situation.Further waiting,further hiding of the truth would be insupportable after this.But oh,the bitterness of it!No wonder that she turned away from those frenzied,wildly-demanding eyes.

"Doris?"

She trembled and looked behind her.She had not recognised his voice.Had another entered?Had his brother dared -No,they were alone;seemingly so,that is.She knew,-no one better -that they were not really alone,that witnesses were within hearing,if not within sight.

"Doris,"he urged again,and this time she turned in his direction and gazed,aghast.If the voice were strange,what of the face which now confronted her.The ravages of sickness had been marked,but they were nothing to those made in an instant by a blasting grief.She was startled,although expecting much,and could only press his hands while she waited for the question he was gathering strength to utter.It was simple when it came;just two words:

"How long?"

She answered them as simply.

"Just as long as you have been ill,"said she;then,with no attempt to break the inevitable shock,she went on:Miss Challoner was struck dead and you were taken down with typhoid on the self-same day.""Struck dead!Why do you use that word,struck?Struck dead!she,a young woman.Oh,Doris,an accident!My darling has been killed in an accident!

"They do not call it accident.They call it what it never was.