Chapter 24

THE AWAKENING

The snow had ceased an hour or two earlier, and the moon shone down upon the glistening pines that shook off their white covering under a bitter wind, when a wagon came lurching into the Somasco valley. Four weary horses floundered in front of it, a thin white steam rising from them into the nipping air, and Okanagan swayed half asleep upon the driving-seat, growling inarticulate objurgations when the vehicle sank creaking into a hollow he could not see. He had, wearing out several horses during the journey, driven close upon a hundred miles through the frost and snow, and had ceased to encourage his companions during the last hour or so. In fact, he was almost as incapable of speech just then as they were of comprehending him.

They had, however, won his admiration, which he was somewhat slow of according city folk, for although there had been times when, as he dragged the worn-out team up steep hillsides through the blinding snow, he almost despaired of reaching Somasco, he had heard no complaint from either Deringham or his daughter. The man had helped him where he could, and when there was nothing that he could do sat silent beside him smoking tranquilly, while, with the flung-up snow whirling about them, the team went floundering down almost precipitous gully or rutted declivity, where a stumble would have hurled them all into the tops of the pines below. Nor had a cry escaped the girl who sat behind them, gripping the side of the bouncing vehicle, when once a horse went down, and on another occasion the wagon left the trail and drove into a hemlock. Okanagan also remembered that though it had been necessary to lift her down when twice they stopped to change the team at a lonely ranch, she rose smiling with blue lips when it was time to go on again.

"Yes, sir," he afterwards said to Seaforth, "there wasn't any weakening down in either of them, and the girl's a daisy."

Deringham, however, was now sitting amidst the straw in the bottom of the wagon, with his arm about his daughter, who nestled close to him for the sake of warmth. A bitter frost had set in during the last hour or so, and the snow was frozen in white patches upon her wrappings, while it was with numbed senses she vacantly watched the pines flit past her. It seemed that they would crawl up out of the darkness and slide by, white beneath the moonlight, forever.

Nor could she recollect much of the journey, which had only left a hazy memory of biting cold and blinding snow, fierce struggles through the drifts, and brief interludes of warmth and brightness in forest-shrouded ranches, where her chilled flesh shrank from the task before her when she rose to go on again. There was Alton blood in Alice Deringham, and more than a trace of the Alton pride, but she did not know what motive had sustained her or why she had borne it all so patiently, and in this she differed from her father. Deringham seldom did anything without a purpose, and he had one now.

His daughter had been asleep with her head on his shoulder when a shout roused her two hours earlier, and with a drumming of hoofs they came lurching into the settlement. For a blissful moment she fancied the journey was at an end, for there were lights and voices and a pleasant smell of firwood smoke, but Okanagan shouted to his team, and the lights faded away behind as they plunged into the silence beneath the pines again.

"Father," she said faintly, "do you think he has gone the wrong way? It seems ever so long since we left the settlement."

Okanagan may have heard her, though the words were almost indistinguishable. "You lie right where you are for another ten minutes, and keep warm, miss," he said; "then I'll show you something."

Alice Deringham shivered all through. "It is a little difficult," she said.

Okanagan spoke to his horses, and after what appeared an interminable time looked down again.

"There," he said, with a curious, almost silent laugh, and the girl saw a red blink amidst the pines across the valley. "That's Somasco."

Alice Deringham let her head drop back on her father's shoulder with a little sigh. "It seems a very long way," she said, "and I am very cold."

It was some time later when the wagon stopped with a jerk, and she roused herself as a glare of light shone about her. Voices came out of it, somebody held out a hand, and a man whom she did not recognize lifted her from the wagon. Then she walked unevenly into the brightness of a log-walled hall and grew faint, while a tingling pain ran through her with the change of temperature. A woman whom she did not know clumsily took her wrappings from her, and then led her into a room where Seaforth drew a chair up to a table beside the stove. Alice Deringham's head was throbbing, but she could see that he was white and haggard.

"How is he?" she said, and the tingling pain grew more pronounced as she waited the answer.

Seaforth's face was very grave. "I think it is touch and go with him--but if he wears the night out he may pull through. It was very good of you to come."

Alice Deringham made a little gesture of impatience. "But there is hope?" she said, and her voice was very low and strained.

Seaforth glanced round sharply as the woman, knocking over something, went out of the room.

"A little, I believe, if he could sleep," he said huskily. "The doctor is with him now--scarcely left him the last four days. We have nobody to help us. Mrs. Margery broke down. The woman you saw is incapable. Harry has been delirious--and asking for you--half the time."

Seaforth looked at his companion as he spoke, and the girl met his gaze directly. There was no room for anything but frankness at such a time.

"Ah," she said simply. "I am glad I came."

Seaforth's eyes seemed to grow a little misty, and Alice Deringham, who suddenly looked aside, wondered whether it was only the effect of weariness. Whatever he felt, he, however, quietly poured something into a cup and handed it to her. "But you must eat," he said.

Hungry and cold as she had been, the girl could eat but little, though the steaming liquid in the cup put a little life into her, and presently she rose up and shook off the coarse shawl which somebody had wrapped about her shoulders.

"I am ready now," she said.

Seaforth glanced at her a moment with open admiration. The girl to hide her weariness stood very straight, and Alice Deringham knew how to hold herself. The pallor in her face intensified the little glow in her eyes and the ruddy gleam of her lustrous hair under the lamplight. She was, it seemed to him, almost splendid in her statuesque symmetry, but there was also a subtle change in her, and a sudden sense of confusion came upon him. He remembered his previous distrust of her, and that it was to save his comrade she had come.

"No," he said quietly; "you must rest and sleep before you go to him."

Alice Deringham smiled a little, but there was a vibration in her voice that stirred the man. "Do you think I could?"

This time there was no mistaking the faint haziness in Seaforth's eyes. "God bless you," he said simply. "He is my friend--and I think you are the only one who can do anything for him."

Alice Deringham had in her a trace of greatness which was instinctive, and not the result of the training that had taught her serenity. So, though the man had not hidden his meaning, she made no protest nor asked any question.

"All this is new to me," she said; "but I will do the best I can."

Seaforth led her into a room where a dim light was burning. It was most of it in shadow, but she could see the still form on the bed, and for a moment or two nothing else. The face on the pillow was very white and hollow, the half-closed eyes had a curious glitter, while a lean hand was clenched upon the coverlet. Alice Deringham had seen very little of suffering of any kind, and nothing of sickness, and for a moment she stood motionless, horrified at the sight of what was left of the man who had parted from her on the verandah the incarnation of resolute virility. As she watched him he moaned a little, and the sound, which was scarcely human and suggested the cry of some unreasoning creature in pain, sent a thrill through her. Her eyes dimmed a little, and moving forward softly she laid a cool palm on the flushed forehead.

"Don't you know me, Harry? I have come to take care of you," she said.

The man's eyes opened wider, and though it was evident that there was not complete comprehension in them he sighed as with a great contentment. Then they closed altogether as he turned his head a trifle on the pillow. The girl did not move, but stood stooping a little, and looking down at him with a great compassion, until a man who had been watching her nodded unseen to Seaforth as he also bent over the bed. He waited for almost a minute, and then straightened himself wearily as he spoke in a just audible whisper.

"Quiet at last, and sleep may come! Miss Deringham, I think?" he said.

The girl bent her head, and moved softly with him towards the door. "He knew me?" she said.

The doctor shook his head. "No--not altogether, I think. Still, he is quiet, and that is everything. Now I may be wanted--presently--and for a little there is nothing I can do, while Mr. Seaforth and I have reached our limits. If Alton opens his eyes, let him see you, and you will give him the draught yonder in an hour from now. It is of vital importance that he should take it. If he does not, tap on the door for me."

Alice Deringham bent her head again, and, when the doctor went out with Seaforth, sat down beside the bed. Her fatigue had gone from her, and though she had never done such things before, she gently drew the coverings higher about the man, and once ventured to raise his head a trifle and smooth down the pillow. Alton opened his eyes, and for a moment they seemed to follow her, but the gleam of understanding went out of them when she sat down again. Then he lay very still, and there was an oppressive quietness through which she could hear the crackle of the stove and the night wind moaning about the ranch. Alton's eyes were shut now, and the girl sat and watched him, too intent almost to wonder at herself. This was the man she had striven to despise, and yet she, who had never concerned herself with woman's work before, forgot her weariness as she waited to minister to him. It was but little help that she could offer--a gentle touch that checked a restless movement, a wrinkle smoothed from the pillow--but it was done with a great tenderness, for fibres in the girl's nature that had lain silent long awoke that night and thrilled.

Now and then Alton moved a little, and once or twice he moaned. The firewood snapped and crackled in the stove, the sigh of the pines came up in fantastic cadence across the clearing, and so while the dark angel stooped above the lonely ranch the night wore on.

There was, however, one man in Somasco ranch who needed sleep that night and found it fly from him. Deringham, who had spoken with the doctor, lay fully dressed in an adjoining room, listening to the ticking of his watch, and for any sound that might rise from beyond the cedar boarding where his daughter kept her vigil. He had gathered that before the morning Alton of Somasco and Carnaby would either have laid aside his activities for ever or be within hope of recovery, and while Deringham dare not ask himself just then whether he desired the death of his kinsman, the suspense was maddening. If the flame of vitality that was flickering so feebly went out Carnaby would be his daughter's, and the burden which almost crushed him lifted. If it burned on there was at the best a long struggle with adversity before him, and at the worst disgrace, and possibly a prison.

A very little thing, he knew, would turn the scale, an effort made in delirium, a draught that struck too shrewdly on the fevered frame, and the issue, of stupendous importance as it was to both of them, lay in his daughter's hands. Seaforth and the doctor slept the sleep of exhaustion, and Deringham could have laughed with bitter mirthlessness at the irony of it all. Until she had quarrelled with her maid, Alice Deringham had apparently been incapable of putting on her own dresses unassisted, and it seemed that the grim, mysterious destiny which treated men as puppets and traversed all their schemes was the one factor to reckon with in that comedy. Deringham, however, found little solace in such reflections, and could not lie still, and rising, strained his ears to listen. There was nothing but the moaning of the wind, the ranch was very still, and the sound of his watch grew maddening. If Alton was sleeping now, Deringham knew it was ticking his last hold on good fame and fortune away. Twice he paced up and down the room with uncovered feet, and then, quivering a little when the floor creaked, opened the door that led into the one adjoining.

"Alice," he said, and, for he had thrown off the mask now, his daughter wondered at his face.

"Hush," she said almost sternly, and then moved very quietly away from the bed. Deringham came in and leaned upon the table beside her.

"The great question is still unanswered?" he said.

His daughter bent her head, and then looked at him steadily. "I think we shall know in an hour or two. Is it important to you?"

Deringham, who was not wholly master of himself, made a little grimace, and the girl glanced away from him with a curious shrinking. Under stress of fatigue and anxiety the veneer had worn off both of them, and in that impressive hour, when the spirit is bound most loosely to the clay, each had seen something not hitherto suspected of the other's inmost self. In the girl's case the sight had been painful, for all that was good in her had risen uppermost just then. In Deringham's there was very little but veneer, and craven fear and avarice looked out through his eyes.

"Yes," he said in a voice that was the harsher for its lowness; "and to you. I did not tell you, but if that man dies you will be the mistress of Carnaby."

Alice Deringham made a little half-contemptuous gesture of impatience, but the colour showed in her cheek. "You are over-tired, father, or you would not have thought of that--just now."

Deringham glanced at her curiously with an unpleasant smile. "You apparently did not comprehend me," he said. "Would you be astonished to hear that Alton, who seems to have anticipated disaster, left you Carnaby by will?"

The girl rose and met the man's gaze directly, though the colour had crept beyond her cheeks now. "No," she said very quietly; "though I never thought of this. I know him better than ever you could do. But it is time I gave him the medicine, and you must go."

Deringham did not move, but watched his daughter as she took up the glass and phial. "It is important that he should have the draught?" he said.

"Yes," she said in a voice that thrilled a little as she stood very straight before him. "I think it would make all the difference between--a girl without a dowry, and the mistress of Carnaby."

Then she pointed as it were commandingly towards the door, and Deringham went out with a white face, as though she had struck him upon it, while Alice Deringham shivered and sank down limply into the chair. She sat still for a moment with eyes that shone mistily and a great sense of humility, and then, rousing herself with an effort, moved towards the bed and touched the sick man gently. He opened his eyes as she did so, and there was no glitter in them now, but a dawning comprehension. He seemed to smile a little when she raised his head.

"You must drink this," she said.

Alton made a gesture of understanding, and drained the glass, then let his head fall back, and feebly stretched out his hand until it touched her fingers. The girl did not move, and his grasp tightened suddenly.

"Hold me fast. I am slipping--slipping down," he said.

Alice Deringham returned the pressure of the clinging fingers, and as she saw a curious unreasoning confidence creep into the haggard face her eyes once more shone through a gathering mistiness. "I will hold you fast," she said.

"Yes," said the sick man in a strained voice. "You will not let go. It's five hundred feet to the river--in the dark below. I'm slipping, slipping--no holding in the snow."

He ceased and looked up at her suddenly as though the fear had left him, and the girl said very softly, "Don't you know me?"

"Yes," said the man. "Of course. I was sliding back into the gully, but I knew you would help me."

He stopped again, and the strained expression suddenly sank out of his eyes, while the girl flushed to the temples when they met her own.

"Now," he said very softly, "I shall get better. Nothing can stop me. You will hold me fast, and not let go."

He drew her towards him, and Alice Deringham, seeing that the brief flash of reason was fading again, yielded to the feeble pressure, and sank to her knees holding fast the hot fingers that drew her hand to his breast. Then moved by an impulse swift and uncontrollable she bent a little farther and kissed him on the cheek. Alton said nothing, but opened his eyes and smiled at her, and then lay still.

For a space of minutes the girl dare scarcely breathe. Everything, she had been told, depended upon the sick man sleeping, and now he was very quiet. Then she raised her head and glanced at him. He had not moved at all, and his face was tranquil, but the hot fingers still clung to her hand. It was borne in upon her that she could in verity draw him back from the darkness he was slipping into, and with a great fear and compassion she held the hot fingers fast. There was no longer any snapping in the stove. The roar of the pines grew louder and the room grew cold, but while the minutes slipped by Alton slept peacefully, with the hand of the woman he had dispossessed in his, and she forgetting her fatigue watched him with eyes that filled with tenderness.

Still, she was not more than a woman, and at last the eyes grew hazy, while every joint ached. There was a horrible cramp in her shoulder, and to lessen it she moved a trifle so that her arm rested on the pillow. That was easier, and while she struggled with her weariness her head followed it, until it sank down close by Alton's shoulder. Then for five minutes she fought with her weakness, and was vanquished, for her head settled lower into its resting place, and her eyes closed.

It was some little time later when Seaforth came very softly into the room, and stopped with a little gasp. He could just see his comrade's face, and it was still and serene, but there was a gleam of red-gold hair beside it on the coverlet, and now a shapely arm was flung protectingly about the sick man's shoulder. The girl was also very still, and a little flush of colour crept into Seaforth's face as he stooped above her and saw the clasped hands.

"Thank God!" he said.

Then he moved backwards on tiptoe towards Deringham's room, but apparently changed his intention, and presently knocked at the doctor's door.

"Time's up, and I thought I'd better rouse you," he said. "Shall I go in, and look at your patient?"

The doctor rose up fully dressed, and Seaforth, who watched him enter the other room, nodded to himself, while the man he had left stooped above the sleeping pair and smiled with a great contentment. He had done what he could, but he knew that a greater power than any he wielded had driven back the dark angel which had stooped above the sick man's bed.

The sun was in the heavens when, finding other procedure unavailing, he gently touched the girl, and Alice Deringham rose silently and turned to him some moments later almost proudly with a soft glow in her cheeks, and a question in her eyes.

"Yes," said the doctor, smiling. "I fancy we have seen the worst."

Then the girl's strength went from her, and she caught at the rail of the bed, shivering, until the man touched her arm and led her from the room. "You have done a great deal, I think, and must sleep," he said.

It was afternoon when Alice Deringham resumed her watch, and she met Seaforth on her way to the sick man's room.

"I want to thank you, Miss Deringham. He is my partner, and the only friend I have," he said, with a slight huskiness.

The girl regarded him steadily. "You mean it?"

Seaforth winced a little. "Yes," he said.

Alice Deringham still fixed her eyes upon him. "And yet you distrusted me once?"

Seaforth's face was haggard, but it was less pale than it had been when he bent his head. "I can only throw myself on your mercy. I was more of a fool than usual then."

Alice Deringham laughed softly but graciously. "I could not blame you--and you may have been right," she said.

Then she passed into the room, and saw the light creep into Alton's eyes, which had apparently been fixed upon the door. Her blood tingled and her neck grew hot, for it was evident that while his mind was clear at last he remembered a little.

"The river is farther away now, but I want you still," he said.