Part 18

From the moment of his rebuff the footman felt that he was not in a position to show his resentment. He wrote to Helen that his friend did not know him and asked her to make no mention of him to Lodge even in the most casual, inferential or roundabout fashion. No need to warn Helen: she had been frightened out of her wits by an incident occurring early after their coming from Hill-Top, and the footman's name was never on her tongue save in connection with his duties as a servant.

* * * * *

As the winter wore on and melted into spring, less and less indeed was the thought of her husband upon Helen's mind. Not, let it be understood, that she loved him less than upon the day of their marriage; but the rush of events gave her little time to think of him. Her letters proved that she thought of him regularly and affectionately, but proved no less that she thought of him briefly--and yet more briefly as time passed.

To Hayward, by nothing diverted from his hungry thoughts of her, his wife's slow but palpable withdrawing from him and from his life was an increasing torment; and the daily sight of her, to which his duties held him, as she attracted and received and appropriated and enjoyed the homage and admiration of the men who crowded about her, among whom in high favour was Lodge, was little less than a maddening torture. She seemed to be escaping him, and his heart was wrung--with love--fear--jealousy--hate. In a nervous hurry of desperation he sent to his lawyer-politician friend in New Hampshire all the information and recommendations he had in hand that were to accompany his application for appointment to a lieutenancy, and wrote to him: "Stir around and get whatever else is necessary and fire them at Washington. Make all haste, as you value human life, for there is almost that dependent on this appointment. It is no little matter of military rank or of dollars and cents, but of life and--love."

*CHAPTER XXVII*

In the months leading up to another summer Hayward was more and more racked with impatience and with a reckless vacillation between hope and pessimism. The one thing that made Helen's gayeties in Washington at all bearable to him was the promise of the coming summer days at Hill-Top when he would get at least an occasional chance of speaking to her and would be rid of the sight of the army of young fellows who were besieging her. There were heartsease and undisturbed love in the Hill-Top prospect, and his anticipations grew apace as the time for the migration came near.... The day was set, and arrived. The ex-trooper's kit was packed. He was ready, expectant.

He got Helen's letter about an hour before their train was to start. It told him good-bye. He looked at the word with dismay. After a time he read on. It had been decided she was not to go to Hill-Top with her mother and the little girls that morning--she did not know just when she would come--she was going to New York for a short visit to Alice Rhinelander, then she was going to Newport, after that to Bar Harbor--she had promised Daisy Sherrol a visit in the Catskills, and Madge Parker to join her house-party at Lake Placid, time not yet fixed--Alice was insisting that she come back to her for the Cup Races in September--besides these there were a number of other things under consideration--and taking it all together it was quite uncertain whether she would get home at all--she was so sorry that she wouldn't, but he must not begrudge her the pleasures of that season--when another came she would probably be an old married woman, steady and settled down--he would please look carefully after mamma and Katherine and May--and with her love she told him again good-bye.

Hayward went to Hill-Top and performed his service admirably as usual: but all the spring and snap were taken out of him. The days were monotonous in their lack of diverting occupation and he had much time to sit still and hold his hands--and think of his wife. But that would not do at all. He tried not to do so much of it. He wrote to his New Hampshire lawyer and had forwarded to him at Hill-Top all the papers relating to his commission, and filled out his spare time for several days in reviewing these momentous documents.

There was indeed a large and various collection of them. He and his friend had pulled many wires--political, personal, military and other. Beginning with a New Hampshire Senator and local politicians, up through army officers and men personally notable to the President of Harvard, from one or another he had drawn largely or moderately of the ammunition with which to wage his battle. Half of these did not know the use he intended to make of their commendations, but they were all sincerely given.

And he had made out a strong case. Such a forcible one in truth that, barring the handicap of his colour, he would win hands down. A man of his intelligence could not but know that it was a strong case, stronger indeed than he had dared to hope for. In the contemplation of it he was elated. The colouring of his outlook was roseate with promise. In that outlook he saw Helen _coming toward him_, not going away as she had been all these months. With his commission was she coming, and his commission was coming so fast, so fast.

He felt that his appeal was irresistible, and his spirit was on a high wave of assurance. So high, indeed, that he decided to omit the personal claim upon the President's gratitude. He had felt for some time that perhaps that would not be altogether fair.... He bundled up the papers along with his final suggestions and sent them back to his lawyer with orders to lick them into shape and forward them to the President without another minute's delay.

He wrote to Helen of the imminence of the crisis in their affairs, but of doubt or apprehension he did not speak. He told her of his decision not to appeal to her father's sense of personal obligation. He exulted in his approaching triumph as if he had already apprehended and went into rhapsodies about the double prize it would bring to him: the shoulder-straps and her: a gentleman's work in serving the flag, and a gentleman's supremest guerdon--her love openly confessed and without reserve.

Helen's answer was brief but warmly sympathetic. She applauded his purpose to win on merit alone. His decision only confirmed her estimate of him. Her faith in his winning was fixed. A tender line closed the missive, and a laughing postscript besought him not to believe the half he saw in the papers about her.

Ah, the postscript! It suggested a thing which Hayward had not thought of before. He began to read the society notes in the metropolitan dailies, with special reference to Newport and Bar Harbor gossip, and with more especial reference to Miss Helen Phillips' doings thereat. He bought one or another of the papers at the village every day, and studied them religiously. In the very first was the interesting item that Mr. Harry Lodge was spending a time at Newport. So was Helen, as Hayward knew, though that paper did not say so. But the next day's issue did: and he began to exercise his brain with a continuous problem of its own devising. The problem was to figure out in his imagination the details of Helen's daily life.

Some days the papers said nothing of her, and then there would be so much that her husband resented the intrusion upon the right of privacy which the correspondents so ruthlessly invaded,--but he welcomed the news of her. The President's daughter was a public personage, and the great newspapers did not hesitate to treat her as such. Her comings and goings, her graces and beauty, her dresses and dances, her thoughts and her tastes, her wit and her charm were never-ending sources of supply for the bright young men who were paid by the column for their "stuff." Hayward read every word of it--though a Harvard man ought to have had more sense: and Mr. Lodge began to figure more and more largely in "the conditions of the problem."

Hayward made no allowance for reportorial zeal or mendacity, the first always much, and the last, while unusual, always possible. The young gentlemen furnished him enough to think about, and his imagination began to add enough, and more than enough, to worry about. When imagination sets out to go wrong it invariably goes badly wrong, for the reason that it plays a game without a limit.

However, the footman's imaginings were not entirely without provocation. As the days passed, Helen's letters became mere scraps, generally tender, sometimes quite tender, but hurried, snatchy, with long silences between. To supply the lack of authentic information of her, her husband studied more assiduously the newspaper columns: and the poisoned tooth of jealousy struck deeper into his heart. At last, between Helen's indifference and the nagging news-notes, he could not endure it longer. He wrote her a protest hot with the fever of heart-burning and of outraged love. He re-read that letter a dozen times in indecision--and trembled as he dropped it in the box.... Nervously he waited for an answer,--and yet he waited.... The silence grew ominous.... His fears grew also. But why, thought he, should he fear? She was his wife, and he had the right to protest.... His anger rose at her contemptuous disregard of him: his anger--and his fear. He knew she was bound to him past undoing. Nevertheless, his fears did abide and thicken, while the summer and the silence drew along slowly hand in hand.

* * * * *

September had come, bringing yet no letter from his wife to fetch the confusion of Hayward's fear, his resentment, his love and his jealousy to something of peaceful order. His spirit was already beset with wild imaginings and desire, when one day he opened a _Journal_ to read:

ROMANCE IN HIGH PLACES

_The President's Daughter, Besought By Eligibles of Many Lands, Will Wed An American Citizen Superb American Beauty Follows Her Heart Engagement of Miss Helen Phillips and Mr. Harry Lodge_

Hayward sat down on the first thing that offered itself. He felt just a little uncertain about standing up. He read the staring headlines over again, and, hot and cold by turns, plunged into the details of this High Romance.

Unbelievable? Beyond doubt. Unthinkable even--to him who knew. But the fabrication artist hammered his brain and heart with such a mass of detail, with such a crushing tone of assuredness and authority, that the footman's thoughts and beliefs were pounded into stupefaction and he knew neither what to think nor what to believe. His brain jumped to recall the details of their marriage, in fearful search of a possible defect or omission which might vitiate it. It had been very hurriedly done, all superfluities were omitted, but the officer had assured him that they were hard and fast man and wife.

Had Helen discovered a flaw in the contract? And would she evade it thus? ... When that last question struck his brain, a dozen passions swarmed to fight within his heart: love, jealousy, fear, defiance. Shaking with the tumult of them all, he wrote to Helen again.

"It has been six long weeks since you received my last letter. Not a word has come to me in answer till this, to-day:

(Here he pasted in the headlines clipped from the _Journal_.)

"Is this your reply? If it is, I swear to you it shall not be. That insufferable cad cannot live upon the earth to take you from me. I will snuff his contemptible life out rather. You know that you are mine--wife--by every vow and promise which the law prescribes. It is incredible that you should ignore your troth plighted to me. It is impossible for you to break it in this fashion. I would not have believed you could be a fickle and unfaithful Helen. I do not believe it. It is a lie. Write and tell me it is a lie. Write quickly for the love of God. No, no, you need not write. It is false. I know it is false--for you cannot be false.

"But oh my Helen, why did you not listen to me? Why did you, a wedded wife, persist in receiving attentions from men, from this one man in particular, the most contemptibly caddish creature among all your admirers? I have deplored your unrestraint but I resent it that _Lodge_ should have found such special favour at your hands as to give currency to this report. He is unutterably unworthy. I beseech you by the love I shall dare to believe is mine until you tell me I have lost it to conduct yourself so that such lies as this shall not be printed. Think what will be said of your gayeties when it is announced that you have been married a year. I love you, wildly, madly, as this incoherent letter shows. You have told me that your love is mine and I believe it. Forgive me and write to me, queen of my heart. I am starving for lack of the love which is already my own."

Helen's reply to that letter came quickly enough.

"I refer you to yesterday's papers," it said icily, "for my answer to your ravings about that absurd newspaper story. Your jealousy is insulting, and your aspersions of Mr. Lodge are inexplicable. He is everything that is honourable, and it is only your frenzied attack upon him that is 'unutterably unworthy.' I sincerely regret that I was so foolish as to marry you when I did. You are unreasonably exacting and I will not be bound by it. You have no right to make demands of me."

Hayward had the sensation of being struck in the face. If he had been disturbed with vague doubts theretofore, he was now harassed by very certain and lively fear. The "yesterday's papers" to which Helen referred him had had a very explicit denial of the engagement, and Helen's sharp reply admitted her marriage to him; but the last declarations of her letter were ambiguous and defiant, and his heart sank when he remembered that marriages were often annulled, and that, even though the courts might not give freedom, there was no way to compel a wife to live with her husband.

Every manner of possibility and expedient whirled round and round in his brain until his thoughts were an almost insane jumble of fear, indecision and wrath. Finally out of the travail of his hopelessness and confusion of ideas there rose his fighting spirit and was born the mighty oath he swore, that she was his, he must have her, and in spite of the world, flesh and the devil, by God, he would have her!

One never-to-be-forgotten night was the first he spent after receiving Helen's letter: a nightmare from his lying down until the dawn. A tumult of shifting phantasms, disordered, chaotic, terrible, assailed him with incessant horrors the night long, while through it all there ran as a continuing and connecting tragedy his struggle to possess himself of Helen. In his wild dreams she was sometimes his and again escaping him; but always when he held her it was by right of might. A time he was clasping her close and warm in his arms, but fainting and unconscious, as he ran with her down Pennsylvania Avenue, Lodge, Rutledge, Phillips and an angry horde in hot pursuit. Again, he was dragging her through a never-ending swamp, limp and lifeless, one side of her face a-drip with blood. With a blood-stained axe he was fighting a furious, breath-spent way through vines and tangled undergrowth, the while there sounded in his ears the lone-drawn baying of hounds upon his track.

From that bed of horrors he sprang with relief before the first light in the east. He was glad just to be awake and he felt as if he wished never to close his eyes again.

*CHAPTER XXVIII*

"You will have Shortman and the landau at the door at ten o'clock," said Mrs. Phillips to Hayward when he appeared for duty that morning. Shortman was the coachman.

When the servants appeared at ten for orders they were told that they should proceed to Cahudaga and bring back with them in the afternoon Miss Helen and two friends.... Shortman, stolid and indifferent as he usually was, was yet interested to note that he could not understand some of the things the footman said and did on that ride to Cahudaga.

Alice Rhinelander's sudden indisposition forbade her to attempt the long drive to Hill-Top, and Lucile Hammersley, of course, could not leave her guest. As Helen was to have but one day at home, however, she decided to go alone, and leave the two others to follow her on the morrow. As it was, she deferred starting till the latest possible moment. A threatening sky, splashed with sunshine but brushed with the fleeting clouds and winds of the close-coming equinox, was Mr. Hammersley's pretext for insisting that she also remain over night; but a childish desire to go home now that she was near it impelled her to tear herself away at the last minute for the solitary drive.

She spoke pleasantly to Shortman and Hayward when she came out to get in the carriage, and Hayward thought that her perfect composure in what seemed to him a tense situation was marvellous to behold. At the first sight of her glorious beauty he had an impulse to prostrate himself in adoration, but that something of the grand lady which she had unconsciously taken on held him stiffly to his character, if nothing else had done so. He held open the door for her, pushed her skirt clear--his pulses gone wild at the touch of it--shut her in securely, climbed to his seat beside Shortman and faced steadily to the front. He was afraid to seek a personal look from Helen's eyes. She, looking upon his broad back, erect and flat, strong in every line, did not guess the storm that was shaking him within. She was no little surprised at the grip he had on himself, and really indulged in some admiration of his indifferent air in what had been to her notion, also, a rather tense situation--for him. Her father's daughter, she had never met or imagined the situation to which she would not be equal...

While Hayward's spirit was being storm-swept, a literal tempest was driving down upon them. They were less than half-way home and on a lonely and unpeopled part of their road when the storm fell. The men and Helen, too, had ascribed the increasing darkness to the fast-coming nightfall, for the air about them was still and warm, and the sun had gone some time before behind a bank of low-lying clouds. A lightning-flash was the first herald of danger; and drive then as Shortman might, it was a losing race.

The storm seemed disposed to play cat-and-mouse with them. Hurrying over them in scurrying clouds darker and blacker growing, it only watched the hard-driven horses, nor so much as blew a breath upon them.... Mocking them now, it blew a puff, puff--and again was silence. As if to incite them to more amusing endeavours, along with another puff it threw at them a capful of giant rain-drops: and again drew off from the game to watch them run with fright.... Next came a brilliant sheet of lightning, revealing the cavernous furrows and writhing convulsions on the storm-god's front--but not the _sound_ of thunder nor the jarring shock of the riving bolt--that would be carrying the joke with these scared and fleeing pigmies too far.... Another awful, mocking grimace of the storm, and then another. After each, the darkness coming like a down-flung blanket closer and closer to envelop the earth. And through it all, that awful silent stillness, broken so far only by the clatter of those sportive raindrops and the rustle of the contemptuous puffs.... But the giant hadn't time to play with children: Crash, ROAR--the hurricane struck the hapless carriage!

Shortman was driving wildly to reach a little farmhouse two miles yet ahead, the first hope of shelter. In the sheets of light his eyes swept the ill-kept road to fix his course, and in the inky blackness following he held to it in desperate and unslacking haste till another flash revealed it further to him.

The thundering wind mauled and pummelled them. It shook and tore them. It shook and tore the very earth as they plunged fearfully forward through the terrible light and the awful darkness. In the deafening, blinding roar and rush, sight and hearing were pounded almost into insensibility and Helen tried to cry out to the swaying figures on the driver's seat--but screamed instead in terror as calamity caught them. Crack! _Crash_! CRUSH!--and woman, men, horses and carriage were buried under a down-coming treetop.

* * * * *

Helen felt she had not lost consciousness, but she did not know. Hayward was struggling to release her from the wrecked landau. He was calling to her, screaming rather,--for the shrieking wind was raging as if with the taste of blood. She could see him plainly as he fought through the threshing branches of the giant oak that had smashed them. The light which revealed him to her was continuous, but flashing and dancing. She looked to see whence it came, and her blood froze as she saw the sputtering end of an electric transmission cable which the falling forest monarch had broken and carried down. At the foot of Niagara were mighty turbines a-whirl which sent the deadly current to threaten and to slay. Men had intended it for works of peace and industry in lake villages, but Nature had stepped in to reclaim it as one of her own cataclysmic forces, and Niagara's rioting waters, unwitting and uncaring, sent it just as merrily and as mightily to works of death.

Hayward well knew that death was in the touch of that whipping wire, tangled in boughs beaten and lashed by the demoniac winds: but Helen was in danger, and he hesitated not to come to her. After a struggle that tested muscle as well as courage, he dragged her free and started to carry her up the roadside bank to a small hut or shack which the light revealed. Helen shook herself from his arms.

"Where is Shortman?" she cried against the tempest.

Hayward pointed to the wrecked carriage. As she looked, one of the horses, uttering a cry and trying to rise, was flicked on the head by the end of the hissing wire, and, in a flash of greenish-blue flame, sank down and was still.

"Help Shortman!" Helen cried again.

At her command Hayward plunged into the tree-top and after a longer struggle than had been necessary in rescuing Helen, he pulled the coachman out and laid him limp at his wife's feet. He understood rather than heard the question she asked. He nodded his head in affirmative answer, and said, as if talking to himself:

"Dead, Miss Helen."

It had not been more than two minutes since the fury of the storm broke upon them. The rain-drops, which had been desultory, now came down in torrents. Hayward turned toward his wife. She was sinking trembling to the road. He caught her up and hurried her to the hut.

Their refuge was quite small, but afforded shelter from the downpour of water. It was a little patched-up affair that had been used by the labourers who constructed the electric transmission line, and was without opening except the door, there being no shutter to that. A rude table of rough planks built against the wall was its only furnishing. What had been a small bench was broken up and useless.