Chapter 12

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_ CHAPTER XII

In the course of the evening, desolated by the ugly responsibility that had been thrust upon him, Braden put aside his scruples, his antipathy, and sent word to Anne that he would like to discuss the new situation with her. She had not appeared for dinner, which was a doleful affair; she did not even favour him with an apology for not coming down. Distasteful as the interview promised to be for him, he realised that it should not be postponed. His grandfather's wife would have to be consulted. It was her right to decide who should attend the sick man. While he was acutely confident that she would not oppose his solitary attendance, there still struggled in his soul the hope that she might, for the sake of appearances at least, insist on calling in other physicians. It was a hope that he dared not encourage, however. Fate had settled the matter. It was ordained that he should stand where he now stood in this unhappy hour.

He recalled his grandfather's declaration that she still loved him. The thought turned him sick with loathing, for he believed in his heart that it was true. He knew that Anne loved him, and always would love him. But he also knew that every vestige of love and respect for her had gone out of his heart long ago and that he now felt only the bitterness of disillusionment so far as she was concerned. He was not afraid of her. She had lost all power to move a single drop of blood in his veins. But he was afraid _for_ her.

She came downstairs at nine o'clock. He had not gone near the sick-room since his initial visit, earlier in the day, literally obeying the command of the sick man: to talk matters over with Anne before coming again to see him.

"I am sorry to have kept you waiting," she said simply, as she advanced into the room. "I have been talking over the telephone with my mother. She does not come here any more. It has been nearly three weeks since she last came to see me. The dread of it all, don't you know. She is positive that she has all of the symptoms. I suppose it is a not uncommon fault of the imagination. Of course, I go to see her every afternoon. I see no one else, Braden, except good old Simmy Dodge. He stops in nearly every day to inquire, and to cheer me up if possible."

She was attired in a simple evening gown,—an old one, she hastily would have informed a woman visitor,—and it was hard for him to believe that this was not the lovely, riant Anne Tresslyn of a year ago instead of the hardened mistress of Templeton Thorpe's home. There was no sign of confusion or uncertainty in her manner, and not the remotest indication that her heart still owned love for him. If she retained a spark of the old flame in that beautiful body of hers, it was very carefully secreted behind a mask of indifference. She met his gaze frankly, unswervingly. Her poise was perfect,—marvellously so in the face of his ill-concealed antipathy.

"I suppose you know that I have been left in sole charge of the case," he said, without preface.

"Oh, yes," she replied calmly. "It was Mr. Thorpe's desire."

"And yours?"

"Certainly. Were you hoping that I would interpose an objection?"

"Yes. I am not qualified to take charge of—"

"Pardon me, Braden, if I remind you, that so far as Mr. Thorpe's chances for recovery are concerned, he might safely be attended by the simplest novice. The result would be the same." She spoke without a trace of irony. "Dr. Bates and the others were willing to continue, but what was the use? They do not leave you a thing to stand on, Braden. There is nothing that you can do. I am sorry. It seems a pity for you to have come home to this."

He smiled faintly, whether at her use of the word "home" or the prospect she laid down for him it would be difficult to say.

"Shall we sit down, Anne, and discuss the situation?" he said. "It is one of my grandfather's orders, so I suppose we shall have to obey."

She sank gracefully into a deep chair at the foot of the library table, and motioned for him to take one near-by. The light from the chandelier fell upon her brown hair, and glinted.

"It is very strange, Braden, that we should come into each other's lives again, and in this manner. It seems so long ago—"

"Is it necessary to discuss ourselves, Anne?"

She regarded him steadily. "Yes, I think so," she said. "We must at least convince ourselves that the past has no right to interfere with or overshadow what we may choose to call the present,—or the future, for that matter, if I may look a little farther ahead. The fact remains that we are here together, Braden, in spite of all that has happened, and we must make the best of it. The world,—our own little world, I mean,—will be watching us. We must watch ourselves. Oh, don't misconstrue that remark, please. We must see to it that the world does not judge us entirely by our past." She was very cool about it, he thought,—and confident.

"As I said before, Anne, I see no occasion to—"

"Very well," she interrupted. "I beg your pardon. You asked me to see you to-night. What is it that you wish to say to me?"

He leaned forward in the chair, his elbows on the arms of it, and regarded her fixedly. "Has my grandfather ever appealed to you to—to—" He stopped, for she had turned deathly pale; she closed her eyes tightly as if to shut out some visible horror; a perceptible shudder ran through her slender body. As Braden started to rise, she raised her eye-lids, and in her lovely eyes he saw horror, dread, appeal, all in one. "I'm sorry," he murmured, in distress "I should have been more—"

"It's all right," she said, recovering herself with an effort. "I thought I had prepared myself for the question you were so sure to ask. I have been through hell in the past two weeks, Braden. I have had to listen to the most infamous proposals—but perhaps it would be better for me to repeat them to you just as they were made to me, and let you judge for yourself."

She leaned back in the chair, as if suddenly tired. Her voice was low and tense, and at no time during her recital did she raise it above the level at which she started. Plainly, she was under a severe strain and was afraid that she might lose control of herself.

It appeared that Mr. Thorpe had put her to the supreme test. In brief, he had called upon his young wife to put him out of his misery! Cunningly, he had beset her with the most amazing temptations. Her story was one of those incredible things that one cannot believe because the mind refuses to entertain the utterly revolting. In the beginning the old man, consumed by pain, implored her to perform a simple act of mercy. He told her of the four little pellets and the glass of water. At that time she treated the matter lightly. The next day he began his sly, persistent campaign against what he was pleased to call her inhumanity; he did not credit her with scruples. There was something Machiavellian in the sufferer's scheming. He declared that there could be no criminal intent on her part, therefore her conscience would never be afflicted. The fact that he consented to the act was enough to clear her conscience, if that was all that restrained her. She realised that he was in earnest now, and fled the room in horror.

Then he tried to anger her with abuse and calumny to such an extent that she would be driven to the deed by sheer rage. Failing in this, he resumed his wheedling tactics. It would be impossible, he argued, for any one to know that she had given him the soothing poison. The doctors would always believe that he had overcome his prejudice against self-destruction and had taken the tablets, just as they intended and evidently desired him to do. But he would not take his own life. He would go on suffering for years before he would send his soul to purgatory by such an act. He believed in damnation. He had lived an honourable, upright life and he maintained that his soul was entitled to the salvation his body had earned for it by its resistance to the evils of the flesh. What, said he, could be more incompatible with a lifelong observance of God's laws than the commission of an act for which there could be no forgiveness, what more terrible than going into the presence of his maker with sin as his guide and advocate? His last breath of life drawn in sin!

Day after day he whispered his wily arguments, and always she fled in horror. Her every hour was a nightmare, sleeping or waking. Her strength was shattered, yet she was compelled to withstand his daily attacks. He never failed to send for her to sit with him while the nurse took her exercise. He would have no one else. Ultimately he sought to tempt her with offers of gold! He agreed to add a codicil to his will, giving her an additional million dollars if she would perform a "simple service" for him. That was the way he styled it: a simple service! Merely the dropping of four little tablets into a tumbler of water and holding it to his lips to drain! Suicide with a distinction, murder by obligation! One of his arguments was that she would be free to marry the man she loved if he was out of the way. He did not utter the name of the man, however.

Anne spoke to no one of these shocking encounters in the darkened sick- room. She would not have spoken to Braden but for her husband's command given no later than the hour before that she should do so.

"Twice, Braden, I was tempted to do what he asked of me," she said in conclusion, almost in a whisper. "He was in such fearful agony. You will never know how he has suffered. My heart ached for him. I cannot understand how a good and gentle God can inflict such pain upon one of his creatures. Why should this Christian be crucified? But I must not say such things. Twice I came near to putting those tablets in the glass and giving it to him to drink, but both times I shrank even as I took them up from the table. I shall never forget the look of joy that came into his eyes when he saw me pick them up, nor shall I ever forget the look he gave me when I threw them down and put my fingers to my ears to shut out the sound of his moans. It would have been so easy to end it all for him. No one could have known, and he would have died thanking me for one good deed at least. Yesterday when I failed him for the second time, he made the most horrible confession to me. He said that when he married me a year ago he knew that this very crisis would come and that he had counted on me then as his deliverer! He actually said to me, Braden, that all this was in his mind when he married me. Can't you understand? If the time ever came when he wanted to die, who would be more likely to serve his purpose than the young, avaricious wife who loved another man? Oh, he was not thinking of your good, my friend,—at least, not entirely. He did not want you to throw yourself away on me, that's true, but your preservation was not his sole object, let me assure you. He planned deeper than we knew. He looked ahead for one year and saw what was coming, and he counted on me,—he counted on the wife he had bought. Once he asked me if I had the faintest idea how many wives have killed strong and healthy husbands in order that they might wed the men they loved better. If murderesses can do that, said he, why should I hesitate, when there could be no such thing as murder in my—oh, it was too terrible! Thank God, he thinks better of me now than he did on the day he married me. Even though he is your grandfather, Braden, I can say to you frankly that if taking his own life means going to hell for him, I would see him in hell before I would—"

"Anne, Anne!" cried he, shaken. "Don't say it! It is too horrible. Think of what you were about to say and—"

"Oh, I've thought, my friend," she broke in fiercely. "It is time for you to think of what he would have done for me. He would have sent me to hell in his place. Do you understand? Do you suppose that if I had killed him, even with mercy and kindness in my heart, I could ever have escaped from a hell on earth, no matter what God's judgment may have been hereafter? Would heaven after death affect the hell that came before?"

"Do you believe that there is life beyond the grave?" he demanded. "Do you still believe that there is a heaven and a hell?"

"Yes," she said firmly, "and down in your soul, Braden, you believe it too. We all believe it, even the scientists who scoff. We can't help believing it. It is that which makes good men and women of us, which keeps us as children to the end. It isn't honour or nobility of character that makes us righteous, but the fear of God. It isn't death that we dread. We shrink from the answer to the question we've asked all through life. Can you answer that question now?"

"Of course not," he said, "nor can I solve the riddle of life. That is the great mystery. Death is simple. We know why we die but we don't know why we live."

"The same mystery that precedes life also follows it," she said stubbornly. "The greatest scientist in the world was once a lifeless atom. He acknowledges that, doesn't he? So, my friend, there is something even vaster than the greatest of all intelligences, and that is ignorance. But we are wasting time. I have told you everything. You know just what I've been through. I don't ask for your sympathy, for you would be quite right in refusing to give it me. I made my bed, so there's the end of it. I am glad that you are here. The situation is in your hands, not mine."

"What is there for me to do except to sit down, like you, and wait?" he groaned, in desperation.

She was silent for a long time, evidently weighing her next remark. "What have you to say for your pet theory now, Braden?" she inquired, haltingly.

"You may rest assured, Anne, that even were it legally possible, I should not put it into practice in this instance," he said coldly.

Her face brightened. "Do you really mean it?"

"I wish you and all the rest of them would understand that I am not setting myself up as a butcher—" he began hotly.

"That is all I want to know," she cried, tremulously. "I have been dreading the—I have found myself wondering if _you_ would give him those tablets. Look me straight in the eye, Braden. You will not do that, will you?"

"Never!" he exclaimed.

"You don't know what that means to me," she said in a low voice. Again there was a long silence. He was studying her face, and queer notions were entering his brain. "Another question, please, and that is all. Can his life be prolonged by an operation?"

"I am assured that he could not survive an operation."

"He may ask you to—to perform one," she said, watching him closely.

He hesitated. "You mean that he is willing to take the chance?"

"I mean that he realises it will make no difference, one way or the other. The other doctors have refused to operate."

"He will not ask me to operate," said Braden, but his soul shook within him as he spoke.

"We shall see," said she strangely, and then arose. She came quite close to him. "I do not want you to operate, Braden. Any one but you. You must not take the—the chance. Now you would better go up to him. Tell him you have talked with me. He will understand. He may even speak a good word for me. Good night. Thank you for—for letting me speak with you to-night."

She left the room. He stood quite still for a full minute, staring at the closed door. Then he passed his hand over his eyes as if to shut out the vision that remained. He knew now that his grandfather was right.

In the hall upstairs he found Wade.

"Time you were in bed," said Braden shortly. "Get a little rest, man. I am here now. You needn't worry."

"He's been asking for you, sir. The nurse has been out here twice within the last ten minutes. Excuse me, Mr. Braden; may I have another word with you?" He did not lower his voice. Wade's voice was of a peculiarly unpenetrating character. Unless one _observed_ his speech it was scarcely audible, and yet one had a queer impression, at a glance, that he was speaking a little above the ordinary tone of voice. "Did Mrs. Thorpe tell you that her brother has been here to see Mr. Thorpe three times within a week?"

Braden started. "She did not, Wade."

"Why didn't she tell you, sir?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, sir, it is just this way: Mr. Thorpe sent for young Mr. Tresslyn last Friday afternoon. Considerable difficulty was had in finding him. He was just a wee bit tipsy when he got here at eight o'clock. Mrs. Thorpe did not see him, although Murray went to her room to tell her of his arrival. Young Mr. Tresslyn was in Mr. Thorpe's room for ten or fifteen minutes, and then left the house in a great hurry, sir. He came again on Saturday evening, and acted very queerly. Both times he was alone with Mr. Thorpe. Again he fairly rushed out of the house as if he was pursued by devils. Then he came on Sunday night, and the same thing happened. As he was going out, I spoke to him, and this is what he said to me,—scared-like and shaking all over, sir,—'I'm not coming here again, Wade. No more of it for me. Damn him! You tell my sister that I'm not coming again!' Then he went out, mumbling to himself. Right after that I went up to Mr. Thorpe. He was very angry. He gave orders that Mr. Tresslyn was not to be admitted again. It was then, sir, that he spoke to me about the money in the envelope. I have had a notion, sir, that the money was first intended for Mr. George Tresslyn, but he didn't like that way of earning it any more than I did. Rather strange, too, when you stop to think how badly he needs money and how low he's been getting these past few months. Poor chap, he—"

"Now, Wade, you are guessing," interrupted Braden, with a sinking heart. "You have no right to surmise—"

"Beg pardon, sir; I was only putting two and two together. I'm sorry. I dare say I am entirely wrong, perhaps a little bit out of my head because of the—Please, sir, do not misunderstand me. I would not for the world have you think that I connect Mrs. Thorpe with the business. I am sure that she had nothing whatever to do with her brother's visits here,—nothing at all, sir."

Braden's blood was like ice water as he turned away from the man and entered his grandfather's room. The nurse was reading to the old man. With the young man's entrance, Mr. Thorpe cut her off brusquely and told her to leave the room.

"Come here, Braden," he said, after the door had closed behind the woman. "Have you talked with Anne?"

"Yes, grandfather."

"She told you everything?"

"I suppose so. It is terrible. You should not have made such demands—"

"We won't go into that," said the other harshly, gripping his side with his claw-like hand. His face was contorted by pain. After a moment, he went on: "She's better than I thought, and so is that good-for-nothing brother of hers. I shall never forgive this scoundrel Wade though. He has been my servant, my slave for more than thirty years, and I know that he hasn't a shred of a conscience. While I think of it, I wish you would take this key and unlock the top drawer in my dressing table. See if there is an envelope there, will you? There is, eh? Open it. Count the bills, Braden."

He lay back, with tightly closed eyes, while Braden counted the package of five hundred dollar bank-notes.

"There are fifty thousand dollars here, grandfather," said the young man huskily.

"'Pon my soul, they are more honest than I imagined. Well, well, the world is getting better."

"What shall I do with this money, sir? You shouldn't have it lying around loose with all these—"

"You may deposit it to my account in the Fifth Avenue Bank to-morrow. It is of absolutely no use to me now. Put it in your pocket. It will be quite safe with you, I dare say. You are all so inexcusably honest, confound you. Sit down. I want to tell you what I've finally decided to do. These surgeons say there is about one chance in a million for me, my boy. I've decided to take it."

"Take it?" muttered Braden, knowing full well what was to come.

"I have given you the finest education, the finest training that any young man ever had, Braden. You owe a great deal to me, I think you will admit. Never mind now. Don't thank me. I would not trust my one chance to any of these disinterested butchers. They would not care a rap whether I pulled through or not. With you, it is different. I believe you would—"

"My God, grandfather, you are not going to ask me to—"

"Sit still! Yes, I am going to ask you to give me that one chance in a million. If you fail, I shall not be here to complain. If you succeed,—well, you will have performed a miracle. You—"

"But there is no possible chance,—not the slightest chance of success," cried Braden, the cold sweat running down his face. "I can tell you in advance that it means death to—"

"Nevertheless, it is worth trying, isn't it, my boy?" said Templeton Thorpe softly. "I demand it of you. You are my flesh and blood. You will not let me lie here and suffer like this for weeks and months. It is your duty to do what you can. It is your time to be merciful, my lad."

Braden's face was in his hands. His body was shaking as if in convulsions. He could not look into the old man's eyes.

"Send for Bates and Bray to-morrow. Tell them that you have decided to operate,—with my consent. They will understand. It must be done at once. You will not fail me. You will do this for your poor old granddaddy who has loved you well and who suffers to-day as no man in all this world has ever suffered before. I am in agony. Nothing stops the pain. Everything has failed. You _will_ do this for me, Braden?"

The young man raised his haggard face. Infinite pity had succeeded horror in his eyes. _

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