Chapter IX

_1-4-2-4-8_

A full fortnight went by, and we seemed to be simply marking time. Warriner was still away, and I had had no word of importance from him. Mr. Fielding Thaneford's condition showed little apparent change, but Miss Davenport told me privately that he was failing steadily. John Thaneford had called some half a dozen times, but his visits to the sick room had been brief and entirely devoid of incident. Either Miss Davenport or Betty and I took care to be present whenever he appeared, and there had been no repetition of any untoward scene. The younger Thaneford contented himself with a few perfunctory inquiries, never addressing his father directly. What would have been the use, since the line of communication had been broken? Moreover, the patient, on his part, never manifested the least desire for more definite intercourse; he seemed to recognize the physical presence of his son, but that was all. And so John Thaneford would come and seem to fill the room for a few moments with his great, black bulk, and again depart. As the door closed behind him, there was never the slightest discernible quiver on the immobile masque propped and bolstered in that amazing vastness of a four-poster, but always the glitter would seem to die out of the watchful eyes, and the slow breathing would become more regular. Whatever the nature of the tension between father and son there could be no question of its reality.

I had taken upon myself the delicate task of telling Eunice Trevor that her volunteer service in the sick room could no longer be accepted. But she acquiesced in the decision with admirably assumed indifference, and thereafter never came near the invalid. Indeed, in those days, I hardly saw her except at luncheon and dinner. Certainly we were not friends, but neither were we avowed enemies; I even realized that, to some extent, I was indispensable to the carrying out of her own tortuous purposes. Once or twice, however, I sensed something in her voice, when she happened to be speaking to Betty, which filled me with a vague disquiet. For remember the knowledge I had acquired of the intimate relations existing between this enigmatic woman and John Thaneford. It was also certain that the latter's financial ruin was impending, and that Betty, even without the landed ownership of the "Hundred," was possessed of no inconsiderable fortune, and therefore a prize worth acquiring. Not that I believed, for an instant, that a girl like Betty Graeme would even consider such a suitor, and Eunice Trevor had said as much to Thaneford himself; had warned him that his hopes in that direction were assuredly futile. Yet even that certainty could be made the foundation, in the feminine mind, of a justifiable grudge; Betty Graeme could be kind or a good deal less than kind to John Thaneford, and in either case Eunice Trevor would hold it up against her. Any woman will understand how this can be, and I may as well be honest and confess that I got my explanation from Betty herself--only that was a long time afterward.

I can easily comprehend why no one could meet Betty Graeme without wanting to love her, and most of us ended by actually doing so. But that even Betty could have worked the miracle of reaching what passed with Fielding Thaneford for a heart! It does seem incredible. And yet, if she had not accomplished that impossible thing, I know very surely that I should not be telling this particular story. It had been ordained that I should succeed to the seat perilous of "Hildebrand Hundred," and sooner or later must I have paid the predestined price of my great possession. Truly love is the master-key to every door, but few of us think it worth while to try it, or are even willing to make the attempt.

I have spoken of the gulf which seemed to open between Fielding Thaneford and me from the very moment of our first meeting--unbridgable, impassable. But Betty crossed it as easily and as surely as a bird on the wing.

"It seems so unnatural and horrible," she said one afternoon as we were sitting in the sick room. "There he lies within hand reach, and yet immeasurably removed. Silence and darkness--oh, I can't bear it!"

"I think he understands what is said to him," I ventured.

"All the worse if he can't break through from his side of the wall. But there must be a way, and I am going to find it."

She left the room, returning a few minutes later with a large square of cardboard on which she had printed the letters of the alphabet. Now I should have made it plain that the sole physical function remaining to Fielding Thaneford was a limited control of the right hand; we had learned to distinguish in its movements the two elementary expressions of assent and dissent.

Betty went to the bedside, and gently slipped the sheet of cardboard under the sick man's right hand. "You see what I mean, Mr. Thaneford," she said, with an infinite note of sympathy in her voice. "If you would point out the letters one by one, no matter how slowly. We will both be very patient--please now."

Fielding Thaneford's hand--the hand of a very old man, with its thickened knuckles and swollen blue veins--quivered slightly, but remained motionless. Yet I fancied that his glance consciously sought the girl's face and rested there; ordinarily you felt that his gaze merely passed over you, and then travelled inimitably onward and outward. It was certain that he understood the proposal, even while unwilling to act upon it. Twice she repeated the suggestion; and then, too tactful to force the point, she smiled and withdrew the square of cardboard. "Perhaps to-morrow," she said with exceeding gentleness, while I marvelled that any human being could have withstood her. But then what quality of our common humanity could inhere in that huge, inert mass of flesh, animated, as it was, by a mere spark of conscious intelligence.

Betty was not one to be easily discouraged. On the morrow she tried again, and again without definite result. The third day the miracle seemed on the point of fulfillment. Fielding Thaneford's forefinger actually moved to the letter B, and rested there. No amount of feminine cajolery could bring about any further compliance, but surely the first step had been taken. "I really believe," said Betty to me, between a smile and a tear, "that he had my name in mind." "How could he help it," I retorted; whereat she blushed so divinely that I could barely resist taking her bodily in my arms--then and there, for once and for all. "You will see to-morrow," she predicted with gay confidence.

But to-morrow brought an unexpected turn. Some subtle change had come upon the sick man in the night, and Doctor Marcy, after the usual examination, looked grave. "I can't be positive," he said, "but I think he has had another slight stroke. Probably a question now of a few hours."

Nevertheless at noon he appeared to revive, and was able to take some gruel and the white of an egg whipped up in sherry. Miss Davenport went for her usual constitutional, and we decided that it would not be necessary to notify John Thaneford. The latter had not been near the house for two days, and had not even troubled himself to telephone. But, considered from any point of view, his absence was preferable to his presence.

It was very quiet in the sick room. The day was warm, but not uncomfortably so, and a cooling breeze, heavy with the fragrance of summer flowers, drifted in at the casement windows.

Suddenly Betty seized her square of cardboard. "He wants to say something?" she whispered, as she passed me. "Don't you see it in his face?" But I, being a man, and so dull of understanding, could only nod and wonder dumbly.

Too late it seemed, for the stiffening fingers had lost even the small powers of functioning that they had hitherto preserved. Even I could now see that Fielding Thaneford was desirous of speaking some last word, of voicing some final message. But, apparently, coordination between brain and muscle had ceased entirely. Absorbed and intent, Betty leaned over him. "Is it John?" she asked. The hand achieved an almost imperceptible motion, but both of us recognized the emphatic quality of its dissent. "Oh!" cried Betty, with an overwhelming rush of sympathy, and took the almost nerveless member into the intimate fellowship of her two warm, exquisitely sensitive palms. Do you remember my speaking of the supreme distinction of her handclasp; how it seemed to fit so perfectly?

Yes, it was undeniably evident that the spirit of Fielding Thaneford was striving desperately to rend its clayey envelope, and deliver its message in terms intelligible to mortal senses. But surely the vehicle was wanting; it could not be. And then, quite certainly, I knew that something had been transmitted through the mediumship of that intimate handclasp. Betty's eyes grew luminous as stars; she whispered some words too low for me to hear. "Is that it?" she concluded. The fast glazing eyes said yes, as plainly as lips could have uttered the word.

What had happened? Suddenly the spark of life behind the monstrous masque that had been Fielding Thaneford's face had disappeared; quite as when the wind extinguishes the candle in a paper lantern. Betty turned to me in a rain of tears. "He is gone," she murmured.

* * * * *

Strange! that I of all men should be the one to compose Fielding Thaneford's hands upon his breast and close his sightless eyes. But life's obligations are none the less imperative that they are unforeseen. The man lying dead upon the bed had never spoken a single word to me; indeed our glances had met but once, and then had instantly fallen away. How could we be other than eternally alien, and yet these final offices to our common mortality had fallen to my hand. And it was still short of a month since the messenger of fate had brought me the invitation to attend the funeral services of my kinsman, Francis Graeme.

* * * * *

Miss Davenport came back from her walk, and assumed charge of affairs with her accustomed efficiency. I offered to do the telephoning to John Thaneford, but Betty determined that the announcement ought to come from her. Just before dinner he drove over, and remained in the room for perhaps a quarter of an hour. None of us saw him, but he had the grace to leave a brief word of thanks to Betty for the profusion of white carnations that she had insisted on cutting and arranging with her own hands.

Late that evening Betty came to me on the library terrace where I sat smoking innumerable cigarettes. "You know he tried to tell me something at the end," she said.

"Yes."

"All he could manage was just the slightest possible pressure of the hand. A succession of numbers then."

"Do you want to tell me what the numbers were?"

"Of course. They were 1-4-2-4-8. I am sure I got them correctly."

"Not much to be made out of that," I commented.

"No, but I feel certain that he meant something by the message, something of importance."

"To whom?"

"How can anyone say? Will you write the figures down, so that there can be no possibility of my forgetting."

I pulled out my note-book, and inscribed the unintelligible formula: 1-4-2-4-8. The resolution of the problem naturally intrigued me, and the obvious first line of approach was the application of the old Russian "knock" system in which each letter is identified with its numerical position in the alphabetical sequence. I explained the theory to Betty, and she was all eagerness for me to try it out. It took but a moment or two to replace the numbers by their corresponding letters; for example, the figure 1 stands for A, the first letter of the alphabet, and the figure 4 represents the fourth letter or D. The complete series read: A-D-B-D-H.

"Not even a vowel to juggle with," I said ruefully. "Blinder than ever, I should say."

"But it does mean something," returned Betty stoutly. "And some day we shall know."