The Firing Line by Robert W. Chambers

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Dinner modified his grief; hope bubbled in the Burgundy, simmered in the
soup, grew out of gravy like the sturdy, eternal weed she is, parasitic
in the human breast.

"He's probably married a million or so," suggested Portlaw, mollified
under the seductive appeal of a fruit salad dressed with a mixture
containing nearly a hundred different ingredients. "If he has I don't
see why he shouldn't build a camp next to mine. I'll give him the
land--if he doesn't care to pay for it," he added cautiously. "Don't say
anything to him about it, Hamil. After all, why shouldn't he pay for the
land?... But if he doesn't want to--between you and me--I'll come within
appreciable distance of almost giving him what land he needs.... O gee!
O fizz! That damn Louis!... And I'm wondering--about several matters--"

After dinner Portlaw settled down by the fire, cigar lighted, and began
to compose a letter to Malcourt, embodying his vivid ideas concerning a
new house near his own for the bridal pair.

Hamil went out into the fresh April night. The young grass was wet under
the stars; a delicate fragrance of new buds filled the air.

He had been walking for a long time, when the first far hint of thunder
broke the forest silence. Later lightning began to quiver through the
darkness; a wind awaking overhead whispered prophecy, wailed it,
foreboding; then slowly the woods filled with the roar of the rain.

He was moving on, blindly, at random, conscious only of the necessity of
motion. Where the underbrush halted him he sheered off into the open
timber, feeling his way, falling sometimes, lying where he fell for a
while till the scourge of necessity lashed him into motion again.

About midnight the rain increased to a deluge, slackened fitfully, and
died out in a light rattle of thunder; star after star broke out through
the dainty vapours overhead; the trees sighed and grew quiet. For a
while drumming drops from the branches filled the silence with a musical
tattoo, then there remained no sound save, far away in the darkness, the
muffled roar of some brook, brimming bank-high with the April rain. And
Hamil, soaked, exhausted, and believing he could sleep, went back to the
house. Toward morning sleep came.

He awoke restless and depressed; and the next morning he was not well;
and not quite as well the next, remaining in his room with a headache,
pestered by Portlaw and retinues of servants bearing delicacies on
trays.

He had developed a cold, not a very bad one, and on the third day he
resumed his duties in the woods with Phelps and Baker, the surveyors,
and young Hastings.

The dull, stupid physical depression hung on to him; so did his cold;
and he found breathing difficult at night. The weather had turned very
raw and harsh, culminating in a flurry of snow.

Then one morning he appeared at breakfast looking so ghastly that
Portlaw became alarmed. It seemed to be rather late for that; Hamil's
face was already turning a dreadful bluish white under his host's
astonished gaze, and as the first chill seized him he rose from the
table, reeling.

"I--I am sorry, Portlaw," he tried to say.

"What on earth have you got?" asked Portlaw in a panic; but Hamil could
not speak.

They got him to the gardener's cottage as a precautionary measure, and
telephoned to Utica for trained nurses, and to Pride's Fall for a
doctor. Meanwhile, Hamil, in bed, was fast becoming mentally
irresponsible as the infection spread, involving both lungs, and the
fever in his veins blazed into a conflagration. That is one way that
pneumonia begins; but it ought not to have made such brutally quick work
of a young, healthy, and care-free man. There was not much chance for
him by the next morning, and less the following night when the oxygen
tanks arrived.

Portlaw, profoundly shocked and still too stunned by the swiftness of
the calamity to credit a tragic outcome, spent the day in a heavily
bewildered condition, wandering, between meals, from his house to the
cottage where Hamil lay, and back again to the telephone.

He had physicians in consultation from Utica and Albany; he had nurses
and oxygen; he had Miss Palliser on the telephone, first in New York,
then at Albany, and finally at Pride's Fall, to tell her that Hamil was
alive.

She arrived after midnight with Wayward. Hamil was still breathing--if
it could be called by that name.

Toward dawn a long-distance call summoned Portlaw: Malcourt was on the
end of the wire.

"Is Hamil ill up at your place?"

"He is," said Portlaw curtly.

"Very ill?"

"Very."

"How ill?"

"Well, he's not dead."

"Portlaw, is he dying?"

"They don't know yet."

"What is the sickness?"

"Pneumonia. I wish to heaven you were here!" he burst out, unable to
suppress his smouldering irritation any longer.

"I was going to ask you if you wanted me--"

"You needn't ask such a fool question. Your house is here for you and
the servants are eating their heads off. I haven't had your resignation
and I don't expect it while we're in trouble.... Mrs. Malcourt will come
with you, of course."

"Hold the wire."

Portlaw held it for a few minutes, then:

"Mr. Portlaw?"--scarcely audible.

"Is that you, Mrs. Malcourt?"

"Yes.... Is Mr. Hamil going to die?"

"We don't know, Mrs. Malcourt. We are doing all we can. It came
suddenly; we were caught unprepared--"

"Suddenly, you say?"

"Yes, it hit him like a bullet. He ought to have broken the journey
northward; he was not well when he arrived, but I never for a moment
thought--"

"Mr. Portlaw--please!"

"Yes?"

"Is there a chance for him?"

"The doctors refuse to say so."

"Do they say there is _no_ chance?"

"They haven't said that, Mrs. Malcourt. I think--"

"Please, Mr. Portlaw!"

"Yes, madam!"

"Will you listen very carefully, please?"

"Certainly--"

"Mr. Malcourt and I are leaving on the 10.20. You will please consult
your time-table and keep us informed at the following stations--have you
a pencil to write them down?... Are you ready now? Ossining, Hudson,
Albany, Fonda, and Pride's Fall.... Thank you.... Mr. Malcourt wishes
you to send the Morgan horses.... If there is any change in Mr. Hamil's
condition before the train leaves the Grand Central at 10.20, let me
know. I will be at the telephone station until the last moment.
Telegrams for the train should be directed to me aboard "The
Seminole"--the private car of Mr. Cardross.... Is all this clear?...
Thank you."

With a confused idea that he was being ordered about too frequently of
late Portlaw waddled off bedward; but sleep eluded him; he lay there
watching through his window the light in the window of the sick-room
where Hamil lay fighting for breath; and sometimes he quivered all over
in scared foreboding, and sometimes the thought that Malcourt was
returning seemed to ease for a moment the dread load of responsibility
that was already playing the mischief with his digestion.

A curry had started it; a midnight golden-buck superimposed upon a
miniature mince pie had, to his grief and indignation, continued an
outrageous conspiracy against his liver begun by the shock of Hamil's
illness. But what completed his exasperation was the indifference of the
physicians attending Hamil who did not seem to appreciate the gravity of
an impaired digestive system, or comprehend that a man who couldn't
enjoy eating might as well be in Hamil's condition; and Portlaw angrily
swallowed the calomel so indifferently shoved toward him and hunted up
Wayward, to whom he aired his deeply injured feelings.

"What you need are 'Drover's Remedies,'" observed Wayward, peering at
him through his spectacles; and Portlaw unsuspiciously made a memorandum
of the famous live-stock and kennel panacea for future personal
emergencies.

The weather was unfavourable for Hamil; a raw, wet wind rattled the
windows; the east lowered thick and gray with hurrying clouds; volleys
of chilly rain swept across the clearing from time to time.

Portlaw and Wayward sat most of the time in the big living-room playing
"Canfield." There was nothing else to do except to linger somewhere
within call, and wait. Constance Palliser remained near whichever nurse
happened to be off duty, and close enough to the sick-room to shudder at
what she heard from within, all day, all night, ceaselessly ominous,
pitiable, heart-breaking.

At length Wayward took her away without ceremony into the open air.

"Look here, Constance, your sitting there and hearing such things isn't
helping Garry. Lansdale is doing everything that can be done; Miss Race
and Miss Clay are competent. You're simply frightening yourself sick--"

She protested, but he put her into a hooded ulster, buckled on her feet
a pair of heavy carriage boots, and drew her arm under his, saying: "If
there's a chance Garry is having it, and you've got to keep your
strength.... I wish this mist would clear; Hooper telephoned to Pride's
for the weather bulletin, but it is not encouraging."

They walked about for an hour and finally returned from the wet woodland
paths to the bridge, leaning on the stone parapet together.

A swollen brook roared under the arches, carrying on its amber
wave-crests tufts of green grass and young leaves and buds which the
promise of summer had tenderly unfolded to the mercy of a ruthless
flood.

"Like those young lives that go out too early," murmured Constance. "See
that little wind-flower, Jim, uprooted, drowning--and that dead thing
tumbling about half under water--"

Wayward laid a firm hand across hers.

"I don't mean to be morbid," she said with a pathetic upward glance,
"but, Jim, it is too awful to hear him fighting for just--just a chance
to breathe a little--"

"I think he's going to get well," said Wayward.

"Jim! Why do you think it? Has any--"

"No.... I just think it."

"Is there any reason--"

"None--except you."

His voice within the last month or two had almost entirely lost its
indistinct and husky undertone; the clear resonant quality, which had
always thrilled her a little as a young girl, seemed to be returning;
and now she felt, faintly, the old response awaking within her.

"It is very sweet of you to believe he'll live because I love him," she
said gently.

Wayward drew his hand from hers and, folding his arms, leaned on the
parapet inspecting the turbid water through his spectacles.

"There are no fights too desperate to be won," he said. "The thing to do
is to finish--still fighting!"

"Jim?"

"Yes."

This time her hand sought his, drew it toward her, and covered it with
both of hers.

"Jim," she said tremulously, "there is something--I am horribly
afraid--that--perhaps Garry is not fighting."

"Why?" he asked bluntly.

"There was an--an attachment--"

"A what?"

"An unfortunate affair; he was very deeply in love--"

"Not ridiculously, I hope!"

"I don't know what you mean.... He cared more than I have believed
possible; I saw him in New York on his way here and, Jim, he must have
known then, for he looked like death--"

"You mean he was in love with that Cardross girl?"

"Oh, yes, yes!... I do not understand the affair; but I tell you, Jim,
the strangest part was that the girl loved him! If ever a woman was in
love with a man, Shiela Cardross was in love with Garry! I tell you I
know it; I am not guessing, not hazarding an opinion; I _know_ it....
And she married Louis Malcourt!... And, Jim, I have been so
frightened--so terrified--for Garry--so afraid that he might not care to
fight--"

Wayward leaned there heavily and in silence. He was going to say that
men do not do such things for women any longer, but he thought of the
awful battle not yet ended which he had endured for the sake of the
woman beside him; and he said nothing; because he knew that, without
hope of her to help him, the battle had long since gone against him. But
Garry had nothing to fight for, if what Constance said was true. And
within him his latent distrust and contempt for Malcourt blazed up,
tightening the stern lines of his sun-burnt visage.

"Portlaw says that Louis is coming to-night, and that young Mrs.
Malcourt is with him," he observed.

"I know it.... I was wondering if there was any way we could use
her--make use of her--"

"To stir up Garry to fight?"

"Y-yes--something like that--I am vague about it myself--if it could be
done without anybody suspecting the--O Jim!--I don't know; I am only a
half-crazed woman willing to do anything for my boy--"

"Certainly. If there's anything that might benefit Garry you need not
hesitate on account of that little beast Malcourt--"

She said in her gentle, earnest way: "Louis Malcourt is so very strange.
He has treated Virginia dreadfully; they were engaged--they must have
been or she could not have gone all to pieces the way she has.... I
cannot understand it, Jim--"

"What's Louis coming here for?"

"Mr. Portlaw begged him to come--"

"What for? Oh, well, I guess I can answer that for myself; it's to save
Portlaw some trouble or other--"

"You are very hard on people--very intolerant, sometimes--"

"I have no illusions concerning the unselfishness of Billy Portlaw. Look
at him tagging after the doctors and bawling for pills!--with Garry
lying there! He hustled him into a cottage, too--"

"He was quite right, Jim, Garry is better off--"

"So's William. Don't tell _me_, Constance; he's always been the same;
he never really cared for anybody in all his life except Louis Malcourt.
But it's a jolly, fat, good-humoured beast, and excellent company aboard
the _Ariani!_" ... He was silent a moment, then his voice deepened to a
clear, gentle tone, almost tender: "You've been rained on enough, now;
come in by the fire and I'll bring you the latest news from Garry."

But when he returned to the fire where Constance and Portlaw sat in
silence, the report he brought was only negative. A third doctor from
Albany arrived at nightfall and left an hour later. He was non-committal
and in a hurry, and very, very famous.

CHAPTER XXI

REINFORCEMENTS

All day Portlaw had been telephoning and telegraphing the various
stations along the New York Central Railroad, following the schedule
from his time-table and from the memoranda given him by young Mrs.
Malcourt; and now the big, double, covered buckboard and the fast
horses, which had been sent to meet them at Pride's, was expected at any
moment.

"At least," Portlaw confided with a subdued animation to Wayward, "we're
going to have a most excellent dinner for them when they arrive. My
Frenchman is doing the capons in Louis XI style--"

"Somebody," said Wayward pleasantly, "will do you in the same style some
day." And he retired to dress, laughing in an odd way. But Portlaw
searched in vain for the humour which he had contrived somehow to miss.
He also missed Malcourt on such occasions--Malcourt whose nimble
intelligence never missed a trick!

"Thank the Lord he's coming!" he breathed devoutly. "It's bad enough to
have a man dying on the premises without having an earthly thing to do
while he's doing it.... I can see no disrespect to Hamil if we play a
few cards now and then."

His valet was buttoning him up when Malcourt arrived and walked coolly
into his room.

"Louis! Damnation!" ejaculated Portlaw, purple with emotion.

"Especially the latter," nodded Malcourt. "They tell me, below, that
Hamil is very sick; wait a moment!--Mrs. Malcourt is in my house; she is
to have it for herself. Do you understand?"

"Y-yes--"

"All right. I take my old rooms here for the present. Tell Williams.
Mrs. Malcourt has brought a maid and another trained nurse for
emergencies. She wanted to; and that's enough."

"Lord, but I'm glad you've come!" said Portlaw, forgetting all the
reproaches and sarcasms he had been laboriously treasuring to discharge
at his superintendent.

"Thanks," said Malcourt drily. "And I say; we didn't know anybody else
was here--"

"Only his aunt and Wayward--"

Malcourt cast a troubled glance around the room, repeating: "I didn't
understand that anybody was here."

"What difference does that make? You're coming back to stay, aren't
you?"

Malcourt looked at him. "That's supposed to be the excuse for our
coming.... Certainly; I'm your superintendent, back from a fortnight's
leave to get married in.... That's understood." ... And, stepping
nearer: "There's hell to pay in town. Have you seen the papers?"

"Not to-day's--"

"They're down-stairs. Wormly, Hunter & Blake have failed--liabilities
over three million. There's probably going to be a run on the Shoshone
Securities Company; Andreas Hogg and Gumble Brothers have laid down on
their own brokers and the Exchange has--"

"What!"

"A nice outlook, isn't it? Be careful what you say before Mrs. Malcourt;
she doesn't realise that Cardross, Carrick & Co. may be involved."

Portlaw said with that simple self-centred dignity which characterised
him in really solemn moments: "Thank God, I'm in an old-line institution
and own nothing that can ever pass a dividend!"

"Even your hens pay their daily dole," nodded Malcourt, eyeing him.

"Certainly. If they don't, it's a fricassee for theirs!" chuckled
Portlaw, in excellent humour over his own financial security in time of
stress.

So they descended to the living-room together where Constance and
Wayward stood whispering by the fire. Malcourt greeted them; they
exchanged a few words in faultless taste, then he picked an umbrella
from the rack and went across the lawn to his house where his bride of a
fortnight awaited him. Portlaw rubbed his pudgy hands together
contentedly.

"Now that Louis is back," he said to Wayward, "this place will be run
properly again."

"Is it likely," asked Wayward, "that a man who has just married several
millions will do duty as your superintendent in the backwoods?"

"Well," said Portlaw, with his head on one side, "do you know, it is
extremely likely. And I have a vague idea that he will draw his salary
with great regularity and promptness."

"What are you talking about?" said Wayward bluntly.

"I'll tell you. But young Mrs. Malcourt does not know--and she is not to
be told as long as it can be avoided: Cardross, Carrick & Co. are in a
bad way."

"How bad?"

"The worst--unless the Clearing House does something--"

"What!"

"--And it won't! Mark my words. Wayward, the Clearing House won't lift a
penny's weight from the load on their shoulders. _I_ know. There's a
string of banks due to blow up; the fuse has been lighted, and it's up
to us to stand clear--"

"Oh, hush!" whispered Constance in a frightened voice; the door swung
open; a gust of chilly air sent the ashes in the fireplace whirling
upward among the leaping flames.

Young Mrs. Malcourt entered the room.

Her gown, which was dark--and may have been black--set off her
dead-white face and hands in a contrast almost startling. Confused for a
moment by the brilliancy of the lamplight she stood looking around her;
then, as Portlaw waddled forward, she greeted him very quietly;
recognised and greeted Wayward, and then slowly turned toward Constance.

There was a pause; the girl took a hesitating step forward; but Miss
Palliser met her more than half-way, took both her hands, and, holding
them, looked her through and through.

Malcourt's voice broke in gravely:

"It is most unfortunate that my return to duty should happen under such
circumstances. I do not think there is any man in the world for whom I
have the respect--and affection--that I have for Hamil."

Wayward was staring at him almost insolently; Portlaw, comfortably
affected, shook his head in profound sympathy, glancing sideways at the
door where his butler always announced dinner. Constance had heard, but
she looked only at young Mrs. Malcourt. Shiela alone had been
unconscious of the voice of her lord and master.

She looked bravely back into the golden-brown eyes of Miss Palliser;
and, suddenly realising that, somehow, this woman knew the truth,
flinched pitifully.

But Constance crushed the slender, colourless hands in her own, speaking
tremulously low:

"Perhaps he'll have a chance now. I am so thankful that you've come."

"Yes." Her ashy lips formed the word, but there was no utterance.

Dinner was announced with a decorous modulation befitting the
circumstances.

Malcourt bore himself faultlessly during the trying function; Wayward
was moody; his cynical glance through his gold-rimmed glasses resting
now on Malcourt, now on Shiela. The latter ate nothing, which grieved
Portlaw beyond measure, for the salad was ambrosial and the capon was
truly Louis XI.

Later the men played Preference, having nothing else to do after the
ladies left, Constance insisting on taking Shiela back to her own house,
and Malcourt acquiescing in the best of taste.

The stars were out; a warm, sweet, dry wind had set in from the
south-west.

"It was what we've prayed for," breathed Constance, pausing on the lawn.
"It was what the doctors wanted for him. How deliciously warm it is! Oh,
I hope it will help him!"

"Is that _his_ cottage?" whispered Shiela.

"Yes.... His room is there where the windows are open.... They keep
them open, you know.... Do you want to go in?"

"Oh, _may_ I see him!"

"No, dear.... Only I often sit in the corridor outside.... But perhaps
you could not endure it--"

"Endure what?"

"To hear--to listen--to his--breathing--"

"Let me go with you!" she whispered, clasping her hands, "let me go with
you, Miss Palliser. I will be very quiet, I will do whatever you tell
me--only let me go with you!"

Miss Clay, just released from duty, met them at the door.

"There is nothing to say," she said; "of course every hour he holds out
is an hour gained. The weather is more favourable. Miss Race will show
you the chart."

As Shiela entered the house the ominous sounds from above struck her
like a blow; she caught her breath and stood perfectly still, one hand
pressing her breast.

"That is not as bad as it has been," whispered Constance, and
noiselessly mounted the stairs.

Shiela crept after her and halted as though paralysed when the elder
woman pointed at a door which hung just ajar. Inside the door stood a
screen and a shaded electric jet. A woman's shadow moved across the wall
within.

Without the slightest noise Constance sank down on the hallway sofa;
Shiela crept up close beside her, closer, when the dreadful sounds broke
out again, trembling in every limb, pressing her head convulsively
against the elder woman's arm.

Young Dr. Lansdale came up-stairs an hour later, nodded to Constance,
looked sharply at Shiela, then turned to the nurse who had forestalled
him at the door. A glance akin to telepathy flashed between physician
and nurse, and the doctor turned to Miss Palliser:

"Would you mind asking Miss Clay to come back?" he said quietly.
"Oh!--has she gone to bed?"

Shiela was on her feet: "I--I have brought a trained nurse," she said;
"the very best--from Johns Hopkins--"

"I should be very glad to have her for a few moments," said the doctor,
looking at the chart by the light of the hall lamp.

Shiela sped down the stairs like a ghost; the nurse re-entered the room;
the doctor turned to follow, and halted short as a hand touched his arm.

"Dr. Lansdale?"

He nodded pleasantly.

"Does it do any good--when one is very, very ill--to see--"

The doctor made a motion with his head. "Who is that young girl?" he
asked coolly.

"Mrs. Malcourt--"

"Oh! I thought it might have been this Shiela he is always talking about
in his delirium--"

"It _is_," whispered Constance.

For a moment they looked one another in the eyes; then a delicate colour
stole over the woman's face.

"I'm afraid--I'm afraid that my boy is not making the fight he could
make," she whispered.

"Why not?"

She was speechless.

"Why _not_!" ... And in a lower voice: "This corridor is a
confessional. Miss Palliser--if that helps you any."

She said: "They were in love."

"Oh! Are they yet?"

"Yes."

"Oh! _She_ married the other man?"

"Yes."

"Oh!"

Young Lansdale wheeled abruptly and entered the sick-room. Shiela
returned in a few minutes with her nurse, a quick-stepping, cool-eyed
young woman in spotless uniform. A few minutes afterward the sounds
indicated that oxygen was being used.

An hour later Miss Race came into the hallway and looked at Shiela.

"Mr. Hamil is conscious," she said. "Would you care to see him for a
second?"

A dreadful fear smote her as she crouched there speechless.

"The danger of infection is slight," said the nurse--and knew at the
same instant that she had misunderstood. "Did you think I meant he is
dying?" she added gently as Shiela straightened up to her slender
height.

"Is he better?" whispered Constance.

"He is conscious," said the nurse patiently. "He knows"--turning to
Shiela--"that you are here. You must not speak to him; you may let him
see you for a moment. Come!"

In the shadowy half-light of the room Shiela halted at a sign from the
nurse; the doctor glanced up, nodding almost imperceptibly as the girl's
eyes fell upon the bed.

How she did it--what instinct moved her, what unsuspected reserve of
courage prompted her, she never understood; but looking into the
dreadful eyes of death itself there in the sombre shadows of the bed,
she smiled with a little gesture of gay recognition, then, turning,
passed from the room.

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