Chapter XXVI On the Precipice
The air of gloom that enveloped Wharton Kendrick’s home was almost physical in its intensity. It was with apprehension that I awaited the opening of the door, and it was with anxious eagerness that I looked to Mercy Fillmore as she stood behind the servant who answered my ring.
“Oh, Mr. Hampden,” she exclaimed, as she advanced and gave me her hand, “I have been wishing you would come.”
I was gratified at the tone of relief and confidence with which she spoke, but my response was to ask of the condition of Wharton Kendrick.
“He is still out of his head,” she replied, dropping into a seat. “Sometimes he talks a little—a few broken words—but most of the time he lies there silent, with vacant eyes. If it were not for his heavy breathing we should hardly know that he was alive.” Her sympathetic face was filled with concern as she spoke.
“What does the doctor say?”
“He tries to look cheerful and speak confidently, but it is such an effort, I am afraid. Yet for Laura’s sake I hope, and try to be convinced by the doctor’s words.” Then she added quickly: “I said I wanted to see you. Mr. Parks was here to-day. We had a long talk, and truly, Mr. Hampden, I want you to believe that he is a man of noble impulses. He is so unselfish, so eager for the good of others.”
“I don’t complain about his instincts. His heart is in the right place, as the saying goes, but his head is upside down.”
“Oh, Mr. Hampden, you do not understand him!” said Mercy in a pained voice.
“Perhaps not; but surely he has not convinced you that he is wise to engage in such desperate enterprises as the overthrow of the government?”
Mercy was silent a little, and then she said:
“I should be glad if he could see some other way to work for the good of the people, but I am not wise myself, so how can I judge him? He tells me that it is not right to reason from womanly fears. Do you think he is in danger, Mr. Hampden? He is planning some important enterprise for to-night. Is there anything we can do to save him?”
My private opinion was that Parks would end by getting shot or thrown into jail. But I could not pain Mercy with any such brutal statements, so I soothed her fears as best I could. “We can’t influence him to keep out of the movement,” I said, “but ten to one it won’t amount to anything but a lot of oratory, and hard words break no bones. You have no cause to worry about him.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear you say so,” said Mercy, looking relieved. “And now I want to tell you about Danny Regan. You know that Moon Ying recognized him as that old Chinaman’s express-man?”
“Yes. She told me.”
“Well, I talked to him until he confessed the whole plot to me. It began last week, after a good deal of bargaining, when he agreed to steal the girl. He came late one night with two others, and thought there would be nobody watching the house. But your men surprised them coming over the fence, and caught Danny’s friend. He is the sergeant-at-arms of an anti-coolie club, he said. Danny and the other one got away. Then Danny came around in the daytime, and pretended to be a tramp, and got something to eat and talked everything out of the cook. She told him all about Moon Ying, and where she slept, and Danny raised a company to attack the house. He was going to set it on fire, and capture the girl as we all ran out, and when the hoodlums came in front, he thought it would be easy. I asked him how he could do such a thing, and his excuse was that he was drunk. He wants to know if you are going to have him arrested, and tries to lay the blame on the Chinaman he calls Little John. Do you intend to put him in jail?”
“I can’t think of a better place for him. How soon can he be moved?”
“I suppose he ought to be punished. But he has suffered much for his crime, and now appears to be truly repentant. And at best he can not well be moved until next week. Don’t you think we might forgive him?”
“No, I don’t. You and Miss Laura might have been killed. I am angrier every time I think of it. Where is she now?”
“She is with Mr. Kendrick. She has hardly left his side to-day. She gave ten minutes to Moon Ying—it’s a blessing that our little protégée is getting able to help herself—and she gave about as much more to looking after the house. The rest of the day she has spent with her uncle.”
“I should say, then, that it was about time she took some rest.”
“Well,” said Mercy, rising, “I hope you can convince her of it. I’ll tell her you are here.” And she left me alone.
It was ten minutes before the door opened and Miss Kendrick entered. I greeted her with some surprise, for she was dressed as though she had just come in from the street.
“Oh, you needn’t look so astonished,” she said, as she gave me her hand with a tired smile. “I haven’t been out of the house to-day, so I thought I’d enlist your services as cavalier. I’m dying for a breath of fresh air.”
“I’m glad to find you with some spirit left. I was afraid you would be dead.”
“I am,” she returned, leading the way out of the door. “But I shall be alive after a little walk. I don’t like being a ghost, but it’s much more tolerable than one would suppose before trying it.”
She was in no mood to make conversation, and walked by my side for a while without speaking. But there was such an air of confidence in her manner, such unspoken expression of comradeship in her attitude, that I was content to follow her example and find satisfaction in the silent communion and feel delight at the pressure of her hand upon my arm. We had walked a few blocks thus before she said, with an abruptness that startled me:
“Tell me about to-day.”
I had been thinking of far more agreeable things than business, but I recovered myself from the momentary confusion into which I was thrown, and replied:
“It was a very lively day indeed.” And, once started, I described, with such entertaining details as I could recall, some of the incidents of our struggle to keep the car of commerce on the track.
“I didn’t mean all that,” she said at last. “It’s very amusing, but I’m not in the mood to be amused. Neither are you. What I want to know about is uncle’s business.”
“Well, as for that,” I replied, “we got through another day safely. We had one or two exceedingly tight pinches, but we wriggled out all right. I guess the worst of it is over, and we shall pull through in good shape.”
She dropped my arm with an impatient gesture, and I felt a sudden breaking of the current of silent communication that had drawn us together.
“Won’t you tell me just what happened at the office to-day, and just how we stand? Didn’t I tell you that I find nothing so terrible as uncertainty? It is the unknown that scares me. Let me see what is before me, and I’ll have the courage to face it. Tell me the truth as you would tell it to uncle if you were talking to him instead of to me.” Her tone was so pleading that my heart melted within me, and I was shaken with the desire to take her in my arms and tell her that it would be the business of my life to shield her from harm. It was a minute before I had a firm grasp on myself. Then I laid the whole account of Wharton Kendrick’s business before her, as fully as I knew it.
She heard me soberly, with only a question here and there to clear up the points she did not understand. Then she asked:
“The troubles aren’t over yet, are they?”
“No.”
“And what shall you do to-morrow?”
“I wish I knew.”
She reflected a little, and then said:
“You can’t perform miracles every day. You could not get through another day like to-day, could you?”
“Not without help from somewhere. But I hope that the worst is over.”
“Oh, you needn’t think I’ll blame you if everything goes to pieces. You’ve done ten times as much as anybody had a right to expect. But there is a limit to the things that can be done, and I know it very well.”
I tried to speak, but she continued quickly:
“Oh, I haven’t given up hope. Not a bit of it. But I have to look ahead. That’s a part of me. But I won’t talk about it if you don’t like.”
At the thought of her anxieties my feelings over-mastered me and I said:
“I do like. But I want you to look ahead to something else—to another future than taking care of your uncle’s house.” My heart thumped in my breast, and I felt a throb in my throat playing strange tricks with my voice. In the instant I thought of all that I had put at stake, and wished I had not begun. But with an effort of will I continued: “I want you to think of another future. I love you more than all the world, and I want you to be my wife.”
She walked silently by my side, neither increasing her distance nor drawing nearer to me. But she walked on and spoke no word, and I fell into a panic over the boldness that had inspired me to my avowal. We had proceeded thus for two or three blocks before I plucked up the courage to ask:
“And what is the answer?”
She kept her head down, but replied with a trace of drollery in her tone:
“It wasn’t a question. And there isn’t any answer.”
“I’ll make it a question then.”
She looked quickly up into my face.
“It wouldn’t do any good if you did. Anybody can ask questions, but it takes a very wise person to answer them.”
“But,” I pleaded, looking into her eyes till she cast them down once more, “it means everything to me, and—”
“I know all that you would say,” she interrupted. “But how can I think of such a thing when I have so much that must be done—so many uncertainties to face?”
She laid her hand appealingly on my arm, and looked up into my face again. Then she continued:
“My uncle is perhaps dying. I don’t have to tell you how all his affairs are in confusion. And you are the friend I have most to look to for help and counsel. You won’t take my chiefest reliance away from me, will you?”
Her appealing look and tone were too much for me. It was a very quiet place on a very quiet street, and the dusk had fallen almost to darkness; so I yielded to the impulse and stopped and kissed her. She did not resist, but drew a quick breath that was almost a gasp, and lowered her eyes. Then she said quietly:
“There—all that is to be put away with the things that were. And you’re to think of all you have said as something that came in a dream. And now we’ll wake up and look to the serious business of life. It isn’t such a very pleasant season of life is it?”
Her voice broke a little as she ended and my heart smote me.
“I hope,” I said, “that I don’t have to tell you that you can depend on me for every service that I have power to give.”
She took my arm again with an air of confidence.
“You are always to be my good friend,” she said. “And now we’ll go back. It’s getting dark, and maybe the fresh air wasn’t what I wanted after all. I’m a bit upset.”
I felt somewhat upset myself. I was certainly left hanging in a most uncertain and unsatisfactory position; but I saw no way to better it, and held my tongue, and wondered with a jealous pang if Baldwin had, after all, won the prize I coveted.
We walked on in silence for a time, but at last she suddenly said:
“Oh, there was something I was near forgetting to tell you. I’ve been sitting by uncle, almost all day, and for the most of the time he has lain there more like a log than a man. But sometimes he has talked—not to know what he was saying, you understand—but some ideas are bothering his poor head. I am supposing that they have to do with his business. A dozen times in the day he spoke your name, and seemed to be trying to tell you something. He told it over and over, but the only words I could make out were ‘notes,’ ‘million,’ and ‘five hundred and sixteen.’ The figures seem to mean something to him, for he has repeated them oftener than anything else.”
She paused for comment, and I submitted my guesses:
“The notes are probably those that Peter Bolton presented to-day. The million is roughly the amount we are short in the business, counting the deficit in the syndicate fund. I can’t imagine what the ’five hundred and sixteen’ can mean. It is not the number of his office, for that is in the four hundred block. There doesn’t seem to be anything in the business that it could signify.”
Laura Kendrick halted me, and looked up in my face.
“I am not given to intuitions,” she said, her tone thrilling with earnestness, “but I have one now. As sure as you stand there, uncle made provision for paying the notes and raising the rest of the money you have had to find, and the number ’five hundred and sixteen’ has something to do with it. Find the five hundred and sixteen and you’ll find the million dollars.” And with a nod of conviction she walked forward once more.
“It may be one of the banks,” I ventured to suggest, “but I can’t remember that any of them are at that number.”
“Mightn’t it be the place of business of some friend, where he has left this money?”
I shook my head at this improbable guess, and turned the problem over in my mind without result. Then I ventured to propose that I should see Wharton Kendrick.
“My presence might stir his thoughts to some more definite speech,” I argued.
“Well, I’ll let you in for just a minute. But Doctor Roberts said that nothing must be done to excite him, and I don’t know as it is right to take the risk.”
In a few minutes we were in the sick-room where Wharton Kendrick lay. His large frame was motionless, except for his breathing. His face was flushed, and the lines of strength and power that it bore in health had faded into expressionless weakness.
“He is like this for the greater part of the time,” said Laura; “yet I have the feeling that under it all he is conscious of what is going on about him, and I do everything just as if I were sure that he could hear and see.”
It was beyond all bounds of probability, yet at the conceit a sudden thought came into my mind.
“If you should be right, he must be horribly worried about his affairs. I’ll just say a word to relieve his mind.” Then speaking slowly and distinctly I gave a brief account of the course of the markets, dwelt on the success of the syndicate in sustaining the business fabric, and hinted at the need for more money on the morrow.
There was no physical response. If there was an intelligent brain in that inert body, it found no servant at its call among the flaccid muscles, and not even the moving of an eyelid gave sign that I was understood. Yet as I spoke, there came somewhere in my consciousness the conviction that I was heard, and that my words had brought relief to an overstrained mind.
Laura Kendrick looked quickly from the face of her uncle to mine, and a sudden light sprang into her eyes.
“You felt it, too,” she said.
“Yes.”
“You have done good; but you mustn’t stay here any longer. Don’t leave the house, though, unless you have to. I shall be afraid when you are gone.”
As she opened the door to banish me from the sick-room, a servant had just raised his hand to tap at the panel.
“What is it?” she asked.
“A man to see Mr. Hampden. I took him into the library.”