Black is White 54

Black is White 54

“He is not going to die, Dr Hodder,” she said quietly. Something went

through his body that warmed it curiously. He felt a thrill, as one who

is seized by a great, overpowering excitement.

 

She preceded them into the hall. Brood came last. He closed the door

behind him after a swift glance about the room that had been his most

private retreat for years.

 

He was never to set foot inside its walls again. In that single glance

he bade farewell to it for ever.

 

It was a hated, unlovely spot. He had spent an age in it during those

bitter morning hours, an age of imprisonment.

 

On the landing below they came upon Lydia. She was seated on a

window--ledge, leaning wearily against the casement. She did not rise as

they approached, but watched them with steady, smouldering eyes in which

there was no friendliness, no compassion. They were her enemies; they

had killed the thing she loved.

 

Brood’s eyes met hers for an instant, and then fell before the bitter

look they encountered. His shoulders drooped as he passed close by her

motionless figure and followed the doctor down the hall to the bedroom

door. It opened and closed an instant later and he was with his son.

 

For a long time Lydia’s sombre, piteous gaze hung upon the door through

which he had passed and which was closed so cruelly against her, the one

who loved him best of all. At last she looked away; her attention was

caught by a queer, clicking sound near at hand. She was surprised to

find Yvonne Brood standing close beside her, her eyes closed and her

fingers telling the beads that ran through her fingers, her lips moving

in voiceless prayer.

 

The girl watched her dully for a few moments, then with growing

fascination. The incomprehensible creature was praying! To Lydia this

seemed to be the most unnatural thing in all the world. She could not

associate prayer with this woman’s character; she could not imagine her

having been in all her life possessed of a fervent religious thought. It

was impossible to think of her as being even hypocritically pious.

 

Lydia began to experience a strange feeling of irritation. She turned

her face away, unwilling to be a witness to this shallow mockery. She

was herself innately religious. In her secret soul she resented an

appeal to Heaven by this luxurious worldling; she could not bring

herself to think of her as anything else. Prayer seemed a profanation on

her scarlet lips.

 

Lydia believed that Frederic had shot himself. She put Yvonne down as

the real cause of the calamity that had fallen upon the house. But for

her, James Brood never would have had a motive for striking the blow

that crushed all desire to live out of the unhappy boy. She had made

of her husband an unfeeling monster, and now she prayed! She had played

with the emotions of two men, and now she begged to be pardoned for her

folly! An inexplicable desire to laugh at the plight of the trifler came

over the girl, but even as she checked it another and more unaccountable

force ordered her to obey the impulse to turn once more to look into the

face of her companion.

 

Yvonne was looking at her. She had ceased telling the beads, and her

hands hung limply at her sides. For a full minute, perhaps, the two

regarded each other without speaking.

 

“He is not going to die, Lydia,” said Yvonne gravely.

 

The girl started to her feet.

 

“Do you think it is your prayer, and not mine, that has reached God’s

ears?’” she cried.

 

“The prayer of a nobler woman than either of you or I has gone to the

throne,” said the other.

 

Lydia’s eyes grew dark with resentment.

 

“You could have prevented all------”

 

“Be good enough to remember that you have said all that to me before,

Lydia.”

 

“What is your object in keeping me away from him at such a time as this,

Mrs Brood?” demanded Lydia. “You refuse to let me go in to him. Is it

because you are afraid of what------”

 

“There are trying days ahead of us, Lydia,” interrupted Yvonne. “We will

have to face them together. I can promise you this: Frederic will be

saved for you. To--morrow, next day, perhaps, I may be able to explain

everything to you. You hate me to--day. Everyone in this house hates me,

even Frederic. There is a day coming when you will not hate me. That was

my prayer, Lydia. I was not praying for Frederic, but for myself.”

 

“For yourself? I might have known you------”

 

“You hesitate? Perhaps it is just as well.”

 

“I want to say to you, Mrs Brood, that it is my purpose to remain in

this house as long as I can be------”

 

“You are welcome, Lydia. You will be the one great tonic that is to

restore him to health of mind and body. Yes, I shall go further and say

that you are commanded to stay here and help me in the long fight that

is ahead of us.”

 

“I thank you, Mrs Brood,” the girl was surprised into saying.

 

Both of them turned quickly as the door to Frederic’s room opened and

James Brood came out into the hall. His face was drawn with pain and

anxiety, but the light of exaltation was in his eyes.

 

“Come, Lydia,” he said softly, after he had closed the door behind him.

“He knows me. He is conscious. Hodder can’t understand it, but he seems

to have suddenly grown stronger. He------”

 

“Stronger?” cried Yvonne, the ring of triumph in her voice. “I knew!

I could feel it coming--his strength--even out here, James. Yes, go

in now, Lydia. You will see a strange sight, my dear. James Brood will

kneel beside his son and tell him------”

 

“Come!” said Brood, spreading out his hands in a gesture of admission.

“You must hear it, too, Lydia. Not you, Thérèse! You are not to come

in.”

 

“I grant you ten minutes, James,” she said with the air of a dictator.

“After that I shall take my stand beside him and you will not be

needed.” She struck her breast sharply with her clenched hand. “His one

and only hope lies here, James. I am his salvation. I am his strength.

When you come out of that room again it will be to stay out until I give

the word for you to re--enter. Go, now, and put spirit into him. That is

all I ask of you.”

 

He stared for a moment and then lowered his head. A moment later Lydia

followed him into the room and Yvonne was alone in the hall. Alone?

Ranjab was ascending the stairs. He came and stood before her and bent

his knee.

 

“I forgot,” she said, looking down upon him without a vestige of the old

dread in her eyes. “I have a friend, after all.”

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER XXIII

 

On a warm morning, toward the middle of June, Frederic and Lydia sat in

the quaint, old--world courtyard, almost directly beneath the balcony

of Yvonne’s boudoir. He lounged comfortably, yet weakly, in the

invalid--chair that had been wheeled to the spot by Ranjab, and she sat

on a pile of cushions at his feet.

 

Looking at him, one would not have thought that he had passed through

the valley of the shadow of death and was but now emerging into the

sunshine of security. His face was pale, but there was a healthy gloss

to the skin and a clear light in the eye.

 

For a week or more he had been permitted to walk about the house and

into the garden, always leaning on the arm of his father or the faithful

Hindu. Each succeeding day saw his strength and vitality increase, and

each night he slept with the peace of a care--free child. He was filled

with contentment; he loved life as he had never dreamed it would be

possible for him to love it. There was a song in his heart and there was

a bright star always on the edge of his horizon.

 

As for Lydia, she was radiant with happiness. The long fight was over.

She had gone through the campaign against death with loyal, unfaltering

courage; there had never been an instant when her staunch heart had

failed her; there had been distress, but never despair. If the strain

told on her it did not matter, for she was of the fighting kind. Her

love was the sustenance on which she throve, despite the beggarly

offerings that were laid before her during those weeks of famine. Her

strong, young body lost none of its vigour; her splendid spirit gloried

in the tests to which it was subjected, and now she was as serene as the

June day that found her wistfully contemplating the results of victory.

 

Times there were when a pensive mood brought the touch of sadness to her

grateful heart. She was happy and Frederic was happy, but what of the

one who actually had wrought the miracle? That one alone was unhappy,

unrequited, undefended. There was no place for her in the new order

of things. When Lydia thought of her, as she often did, it was with an

indescribable craving in her soul. She longed for the hour to come when

Yvonne Brood would lay aside the mask of resignation and demand tribute;

when the strange defiance that held all of them at bay would disappear,

and they could feel that she no longer regarded them as adversaries.

 

There was no longer a symptom of rancour in the heart of Lydia Desmond.

She realised that her beloved’s recovery was due almost entirely to

the remarkable influence exercised by this woman at a time when mortal

agencies appeared to be of no avail. Her absolute certainty that she had

the power to thwart death, at least in this instance, had its effect not

only on the wounded man, but on those who attended him.

 

Dr Hodder and the nurses were not slow to admit that her magnificent

courage, her almost scornful self--assurance, supplied them with an

incentive that otherwise might never have got beyond the form of a mere

hope. There was something positively startling in her serene conviction

that Frederic was not to die. No less a sceptic than the renowned Dr

Hodder confided to Lydia and her mother that he now believed in the

supernatural and never again would say “there is no God.”

 

Hodder had gone to James Brood at the end of the third day and, with the

sweat of the haunted on his brow, had whispered hoarsely that the case

was out of his hands. He was no longer the doctor, but an agent governed

by a spirit that would not permit death to claim its own. And somehow

Brood understood far better than the man of science.