CHAPTER XIII

THE ESCAPE

Annie waved one hand aloft. When she spied her husband on the beach, she waved the other hand. Her movement suggested flying.

"Conscious!" she cried, "she's conscious; she's going to get well!"

Emil gazed at her as at an apparition. His knees bent, he dropped in a heap on the sand.

Annie stooped to him: "It's life--life--life, Alexander!" she panted; "not death--life!"

His arms went about his head.

Annie knelt and put an arm around his heaving shoulders. She flung back her hair, lifting her face. "Life, life, life!" she whispered.

And it was life.

Early on the morning of the third day following the catastrophe, the doctor spoke cautiously of an improvement in the patient; there was unquestionably a favourable change. But it was only when Rachel followed the first vague opening of her eyes with a stirring of her hands, that he spoke heartily of recovery. No injury to the spine, that was clear. Merely a brain concussion, as he had hoped. But any excitement coming to her now--the doctor closed his medicine case with a snap.

There was the difficulty. How to keep his wife in a state of perfect tranquillity, this was Simon's problem. Hour after hour his vigilance did duty in her chamber; but when they came, those questions of hers, so weak he had to lean to catch them, yet charged with eagerness, he knew not how to stem the tide.

Her first word was of Annie. To Simon this question, after the long stillness, was like a star trembling out of complete black night. He could have wept on hearing her.

"Is Annie safe?" she murmured, and followed the inquiry with a beseeching glance; "is she well?"

Mindful of his task, he lifted an admonishing finger, while answering her strongly in the affirmative.

"Annie," he said, "is safe and sound; she's as right as possible."

She smiled up at him, a picture of peace and thankfulness. But a few moments later anxiety spoke in a soft contraction of her brow: "Emil--is he well?"

"Yes, he's well; we're all well, and all of us in high spirits because of you, dear. But you must obey the doctor."

Once more Rachel exhibited a face of repose; but almost immediately her eyes flew wide.

"All?" she echoed, "you said all?"

Simon repeated his words stoutly.

"André too?"

He bent his head with a stifled "yes."

At something in his voice, she managed to lift herself, and as she looked at him a colourless and piteous smile came upon her lips.

"Not André," she said.

"Why do you say that?" and, settling her on the pillows, he affected to laugh at the fancy, but her changed aspect alarmed him.

"Because of your face, because I did not see André after--" Her features seemed hidden beneath a veil of dumb suffering. Then her whole countenance shut on a thought; an immense concentration chained her. Directly she felt for his hand.

"André is still here?" she asked.

"Yes."

"May I see him?"

Simon's look wavered and his eyes sank under hers. His attempt to deceive was manifest, plain as the Writing on the Wall.

"Oh not now," he said, striving for an air that should restore her confidence, "you can't see anyone now, you know."

But her suspicions were past allaying, though she swerved swiftly to another question.

"The fire," she demanded. "Do they know what caused the fire?"

"Oh, some carelessness, doubtless. Mrs. St. Ives may have dropped a match."

Once more Rachel half lifted herself. She shook her head, scanning him fixedly.

"Annie was asleep--the cottage locked. Simon, is it known who set that fire?"

He gasped, unable to believe the astonishing thing: she was actually taking the facts from his mind. He opened his lips, but she needed no answer.

"Oh," she whispered, on a long breath, "I understand. And _now_--now where is he?" and her fingers closed on his convulsively. "_Now?_" Her voice rose.

Helplessly Simon met her look and his jaw hung.

"He is dead," she said, and relaxed her hold.

Seeing that she had guessed all through the marvellous second-sight of love, Simon told her the story briefly, striving, however, to lessen its sadness by relating it in a voice soothing as the ripple of a stream.

"And directions came to-day from the mother," he concluded, "so St. Ives can start with the--the boy, to-morrow morning early. There's a milk train passes through here at five; it will be flagged. In that way St. Ives will make good connections. As for Mrs. St. Ives--" Simon might have been telling her any news, save that he hastened his speech a little as he struck into this new subject--"she goes along too. She will stop in the city, however, for the John Street place is all ready for occupancy and it seemed wisest-- My darling Rachel! my own reasonable brave girl!" he cried. "You know you always said the lad was not quite right mentally and he certainly had that air; the servants all remarked it."

From her closed eyes, over her white cheeks, her tears rolled steadily. "Poor, poor André," she whispered.

She knew--she guessed all. She remembered praising the organ attachment to André. And later he had witnessed that mad meeting between her and Emil in the garden. As she imagined the boy, lost, wandering, inflamed with jealousy; remorse intolerable and overwhelming filled her. She had driven him to the desperate act.

Never the less Simon's gravest apprehensions were relieved. Almost with the first glimmer of returning consciousness she had divined the truth and it had not wrecked her, for after that first rain of tears, the strange and lofty look of peace returned to her face. André had been unhappy; now he was no longer so. His need of her guidance had been imperative; now that need no longer existed. Dear heart, dear, simple, clinging soul! And the comforting comparison struck her of a little lost child with its hand safely locked at last in the hand of the All-Father.

She spoke no more until evening; then, as if pursuing a subject that had just been mentioned:

"And Emil will go with him? He will see André's mother?"

"Yes, dearest."

"And he will tell her the truth? For you must explain to Emil, Simon, that he need not hide the truth from Lizzie. Any fiction about André she'd see through: she's his mother. And Emil is to say that I will write and that soon I will come."

"Yes, he will tell her."

"And before they start, Emil and Annie,--they will come here?"

She was so bent on seeing them it seemed unwise to oppose her.

When Simon leaned over her bed in the morning, he knew from her expression that she was alert to the muffled commotion below stairs--to those sharp hammerings, those stealthy treads, those silences--throbbingly alert, although there was no diminution in the radiance of her eyes.

"They have come, dearest," he said, and left the room.

Emil and Annie came forward. Never before at any time had they seen Rachel as she appeared to them now. The courage of her strong young face was mingled with a look of unutterable sweetness. She reached a hand to each.

Instantly Annie was on her knees and Rachel had her head in the curve of a feeble arm. She pressed Annie's head to her breast with fingers tremulous with blessing as a mother's. They said nothing--no words were needed.

Rising, Annie stole to a distant window.

Rachel had kept her hold on Emil. Now once more she looked at him with a smile that expressed more love than she had ever shown him before. Such complete, such utter tenderness, he had never dreamed eyes could hold. And yet in those soft depths so earthly-sweet, he saw renunciation shining through devotion.

He blanched.

In a voice in which there was a tremour she could not control, Rachel spoke of his work and of herself as watching his progress with eagerness.

"For I long, I long more than you can realize to have you make the best possible use of your life. I have set my hopes on you, such high hopes, Emil; and you will not disappoint me."

Finally, panting a little but with electrical energy, with exquisite passionateness, she spoke of the open vision of love. "It is," she said, letting her eyes dwell wistfully in his, "the forgetting of ourselves and--and the abandonment of our self-seeking. This is the soul's way out. And it is the only way out," she insisted.

At first he did not understand, but gradually as he listened, helpless in his grief, her words opened out before him like a pathway that led somewhere into peace.

He looked down at her, his eyes flaming as if all his life had centralized and focused within them. Then he bent and laid his forehead on her arm.

What with weak souls requires time, even long years, powerful natures achieve at once. In the silence Emil's oath was fulfilled.

Summoning Annie, Rachel kissed her; and the other, with timid impulsiveness, slipped a little hand in that of her husband. So they left Rachel. But at the door they turned. She was still gazing after them with a mute, almost mystic concentration. Meeting their look, however, she suddenly smiled and in her eyes was the splendour of some newly-discovered truth.

Something she had long wished for had been gained. She felt a sense of supreme restfulness and this sense deepened and increased even as she lent an ear to the sound of the wheels on the gravel, those wheels that were carrying from her, through the stillness of the morning world, the two who had loved her wildly and whom she had loved.

When Simon returned, he found her leaning on her elbow. The nurse had carried out the night-lamp and the chamber was filled with a wan half-light.

"The box, Simon, will you hand it to me?"

He did not know at first to what she referred; his brow flew up in wrinkles: then he brought the little Swiss clock from its place on her dressing-table.

"Now wind it," she said.

He wound the pretty plaything, and placed it on her raised knees.

Lying back on her pillows, her hands folded across her breast, Rachel listened to the tiny bird, and as she listened, a little, tender, understanding smile touched her lips.

When the golden shell had closed over the performer she looked up at her husband:

"Its song is the song of freedom, isn't it?"

But for Simon these words had no meaning. He had not slept for several nights, and as he replaced the box in its former position, he stumbled. He took a chair beside the bed and his head sank. Lower and lower it sank until it rested on the pillow beside hers. She laid her hand on it.

And ever the day waxed stronger. Now as the mist began to lift, the wild birds awoke in the garden. Here and there from a tree sounded a tentative chirp. The air moved in currents of keener freshness. Everything breathed of the dawn. Rachel turned her eyes to the sea and on her face was the light of her inner vision.

Thus Love solves all the problems that torture the soul of man; through beauty and through silence, it speaks to the heart of a Freedom beyond all its earthly dreams.

THE END