1 "I think I'll be going now, if you'll permit me, sir," said Benjamin Bunce. "And, if I may be allowed to say so, sir, congratulations."
"Thanks, Bunce. Toddle off if you like."
It was past eight o'clock, and the Temple curiously quiet. Ronnie, kindling himself a pipe and leaning back in his battered armchair, heard his clerk's boot-soles hurrying through, the colonnade of Pump Court; and after that, never a footfall.
Despite Spillcroft's invitation and Cartwright's, despite an imploring wire from Bertram Standon to meet his entire staff at the Savoy, the barrister had dined early and alone. His work had played him out. Looking back, he could remember nothing of the case, except that last frenzied scene outside the court, whence--the police good-temperedly intervening--he and his client and the armless sailor had escaped in John Cartwright's car. Trying to recapture the events of the last three days, and more especially the words of his final speech, it seemed as though he had been some one other than himself, as though the hand of fate itself had steered him to victory. Perhaps that was why victory seemed so valueless!
To sit there in the old chambers where he had dreamed so many dreams; to watch the pipe-smoke curling round his head, and know Lucy Towers saved; to imagine Lucy Towers and Bob Fielding happily married; even to realize Brunton, his enemy Brunton, beaten--afforded no satisfaction. Curious, he thought, how little his public triumph over Aliette's husband, his public success, affected him! So often in the last fifteen months he had thrilled to the vision of himself successful: yet now--now that success had actually been accomplished--it held no joy.
Glooming, Ronnie's thoughts switched from the public issue to the personal. What did it avail that he, Ronald Cavendish, should have rolled the "hanging prosecutor" in the dust; that the press was already blazing his fame from one end of England to another--so long as Brunton remained, as Brunton would remain, the legal owner of Aliette? What did it profit him to have saved the woman in the dock if he could not save the woman in his own home?
The pipe went out, and his slack fingers could not be bothered to rekindle it. Depression, the terrible depression of overstrain, settled like a miasma-cloud on his brain. His triumph became a mockery, his fame a whited sepulcher. Saving others, he could save neither himself nor the woman he loved. Aliette was outcast, would remain outcast; and he with her. All the pleasant things his success might have won for them both--social position, companionship of friends, political possibilities--were beyond their reach. To them, success could only bring money.
Bitterly he fell to reproaching himself--as all the lovers of all the Aliettes do reproach themselves in those hours when love comes not to their aid--for ever having persuaded her to run away with him. What was the use of blaming Brunton, of hating Brunton? He himself and no other was responsible. He felt the flame of his old hatred against Brunton blow back, scorching his own head. Truly loving Aliette, he should have been satisfied--as Robert Fielding had been satisfied--with renunciation.
"I've been selfish," he thought, "selfish"; and, so thinking, remembered his mother.
Toward her, too, he had played the complete egoist; forgetful--in his self-concentration, in the absorption of his work and the battle against his enemy--of her need for him, of her illness.
And abruptly, luminous through the darkness which had settled on his mind, Ronnie saw a picture of Daffadillies. The great house stood foursquare under the moon. Trees spired sable from the gleam of its lawns. Its roof glittered under a glittering sky. From its gabled windows glowed the saffron welcome of lamp-light. Behind one of those gabled windows, his mother, who had loved him all her life, who had grudged him never a thought, never a sacrifice, lay ill; mortally ill perhaps.
And suddenly it seemed to Julia's son as though the darkness of his own mind came between the moon and Daffadillies. Black clouds, ragged and menacing, drifted down from the glitter of the skies, blurring the saffron window-gleams. Mists swirled about the spring trees, across the gleam of the lawns. Watching the menace of those ragged clouds, the cold swirl of the mists, he knew fear, the old battle-fear of death.
If only the clouds would break, the mists roll away from Daffadillies. But there came no break in the ragged clouds. Black they banked, and blacker, round the high moon; till the moon was no more, and only the ghost of a ghostly house trembled--as smoke seen through smoked glass--through the swirl of the mist.
Then even the ghost of Daffadillies vanished; and, sightless, he peered at the void.
Till, out of the void, sound issued--the sound of a woman's voice--of his mother's voice: "Ronnie! Ronnie! I am afraid. Come to me."
2
With a start, Ronald Cavendish awoke.
The green-shaded lamp still burned at his head, showing up every stain on the leather desk-top, every ink-spot on the pewter inkstand. There were his quill pens; his thumb-soiled brief. There, on the shelves, were his law-books. At his feet, its ashes spilled from cracked bowl to worn carpet, lay the pipe he had been smoking. "I must have been dreaming," he thought.
But the dream and the fear of the dream still haunted his mind. Vainly, rubbing his eyes, he strove for courage. Always, his imagination saw the darkness gathering about Daffadillies; always, out of the gathering darkness, he heard his mother's voice--calling--calling. Till, fear-haunted, he sprang to his feet.
His feet moved under him. They moved very slowly, as the feet of a sleep-walker. He said to his feet, "This is foolishness, foolishness." He said to his feet, "Be still."
He found himself in the corridor. He found himself at the telephone. He said to himself, "I might just make certain that she's all right."
Then, startlingly, the telephone-bell rang; and, startled, he picked the receiver from the clip. Ages seemed to pass before he heard the operator's: "City double-four two eight? Don't go away. I want you."
Followed, very distinct at that hour of the night, "Horsham, you're through"; and after a pause, "Is that Mr. Cavendish? Mr. Ronald Cavendish? This is Mrs. Sanderson speaking. I rang up Embankment House, but the porter said you weren't back yet." Already Ronnie's ears, acute, apprehensive, knew the worst. "Can you get through to Dr. Baynet? Can you bring him down at once? Your mother has had another hemorrhage."
"A bad one?" Ronnie tried to smooth the fear from his voice.
"I'm afraid so. Your wife's upstairs with Dr. Thompson. Would you like to speak to her?"
"No. Tell her that I'll get on to Sir Heron at once. Tell her, please," the words snapped decision, "that I'll bring him down to Daffadillies to-night. Do you understand? To-night! Tell the lodge-keeper to wait up for us, to have the gates open. Is that quite clear?"
"Quite clear." The automaton's answer sounded irritatingly calm. "Quite clear, thank you."
"Then good night." With a click of decision, Ronnie replaced the receiver. Danger, ousting fear, galvanized him to action. He looked at the clock. The hands pointed to 9:15. The last train for West Water left at nine! He snatched up the telephone-book; found the doctor's number; called it.
A man-servant answered. "Sir Heron's engaged. Can I take any message?"
"No. I want to speak to him personally."
"Sir Heron is giving a dinner-party, sir."
"Tell him the matter is urgent ... Yes ... Cavendish ... Ronald Cavendish."
The man left the instrument. Waiting, Ronnie grew apprehensive. Suppose Sir Heron refused to come.... Then he heard, "Is that you, Cavendish? No bad news, I hope?"
"Very bad, I'm afraid. I've just spoken to Daffadillies on the telephone. My mother's had another hemorrhage. Can you come down to-night?"
"To-night?"
"Yes. With me. The last train's gone. I'm going down by taxi."
Silence ... and again Ronnie grew apprehensive. Sir Heron was a specialist--a great man. Absurd to ask such a favor of him!
Interrupted Sir Heron's decisive, "Very well. No need for a taxi. You can come down in my car. Where are you telephoning from?"
"The Temple."
"Then be here in twenty minutes."
3
Snatching his hat and his coat, clicking off the light, and slamming his oak behind him, Ronnie darted downstairs into Pump Court, through Pump Court and up Middle Temple Lane toward the barred gate which gives on to Fleet Street. In seconds he was at the side door of the gate--through it--and into a taxi. In seconds he was whirling away from the deserted law courts, past the gleaming front of the Gaiety Theater, down the Strand.
He wanted speed--speed. Not till they were out of the Strand and through Trafalgar Square did thought oust action from his mind. And then thought was fearful--terrifying. Again, as on that night when he and Aliette had taxied from Embankment House to Bruton Street, he saw his mother dying. But now he saw himself guilty of her death.
Harley Street reached, a long blue car purred past his taxi and pulled up a hundred yards ahead. Reaching the car, the taxi stopped. Ronnie leaped out; flung a couple of half-crowns to his driver; leaped up the steps of the Georgian house; and rang. The door opened instantaneously; revealing--behind the portly form of the butler--a long tessellated hall. Down the staircase into the hall--his dinner-party abandoned--came the punctual specialist.
"That you, Cavendish? I sha'n't be a moment." Sir Heron, already in his fur coat, his slouch hat pulled on anyhow, disappeared round the newel post of the staircase toward his consulting room; and re?merged, with a battered black medicine-case in his hand. "Come along. We can talk in the car. In you go----"
The butler closed the door of the limousine behind them; and the doctor's chauffeur, obviously preinstructed as to their destination, turned the long Rolls-Royce bonnet south.
"Another hemorrhage, you say?" Sir Heron lit himself a cigarette; and in the red spurt of the match, Ronnie could see that his face was troubled. "I'm glad you telephoned."
"It's very good of you to come down at such short notice, Sir Heron.''
"Only my duty."
The great car swept down Portland Place, down Regent Street. At the Circus, Heron Baynet picked up the speaking-tube, and called, "Take the Bromley road, please."
"Wonderful woman, your mother," he said suddenly. "I wish I could have done more for her."
"There's no chance, then?"
"None now, I'm afraid." The car purred on out of London, and after a long time the specialist said: "Not that there ever was more than the ghost of a chance."
"There was a chance then--once?" Ronnie's face, seen in the intermittent light of the passing street-lamps, showed white with misery. Again he was remembering that other night--the night when he had waited with Smithers outside Julia's door.
"Meaning?" prevaricated the specialist.
"This." Bonnie's teeth clenched on the Bullet. "Suppose that my mother had gone away to Switzerland or the south of France a year ago, she might have been saved?"
"I doubt it."
"But you advised Switzerland, didn't you?"
"Admitted." Sir Heron looked shrewdly at his cross-examiner. "Blaming yourself?" he asked bruskly.
"Yes."
"You needn't. Even if she had done what I told her, we couldn't have cured the diabetes." He plunged into medical details.
"Nobody's to blame then?" The voice of Julia Cavendish's son embodied a whole army of questions.
"No, nobody. Not even herself. If you blame any one, blame nature." And Sir Heron, who knew more of Ronnie's story than Ronnie guessed, added quietly: "Your wife has been a wonderful nurse, Cavendish."
"Thank you, Sir Heron." The men's thoughts, meeting, understood one another. "You've taken rather a weight off my mind. Tell me one thing more. This work she's been doing: has it been harmful?"
"Not as harmful as trying to prevent her from doing it."
"I see." Consoled, Ronnie fell silent.
But the consolation was short-lived. All said and done, what did it matter at whose hand--his own or nature's--his mother lay stricken? Remained always the bitter unescapable knowledge that the surest consultant in England spoke of her as one already doomed. In a little while there would be no Julia. Even now--impossible as it seemed, driving thus down the living breathing streets into the living breathing country--she might be already dead.
4
"We've done it in well under two hours." Sir Heron, who had been dozing, opened his eyes as the car-lights climbed West Water Hill and began to thread their illuminated path through the woods which surround Daffadillies.
The Rolls-Royce made the lodge-gates; found them swung back from their stone pillars; swept through; and, rounding the drive, pulled up noiselessly at the open door of the great house. In the glow of the doorway stood Aliette. Ronnie hardly saw, as she came down the steps to meet him, how lined and drawn was her face, how wide with anxiety her brown eyes.
"Sir Heron"--her voice sounded calm, controlled; the hand on her lover's arm did not tremble--"you'll go to her at once, won't you............