"Never mind, dear," she said coaxingly. "Don't fret about Chilly."

Mrs. Allen's voice interposed. "Chilly sent me the message an hour ago," she said, with an accent that seemed finally to dismiss the topic. "I think you would better dress now, Echo. Nancy has been in some time, and dinner's at seven-thirty."

CHAPTER III

THE AWAKENING

An automobile speeding through the starry dark! No hesitant progress through congested traffic, no frequent swerving for daylight wayfarers.

The city was far behind now--only the clear, well-nigh deserted road, winding like a tremulous magenta ribbon through the swooping gloom that seemed to shrink and cringe from the metal monster hurtling after its golden halo through the eddying dust.

A practised hand was on the throttle and the yellow-lined face bent over the wheel was shrewd and keen. There had been no supper for Bob that night and no evening at Black Joe's billiard parlour, but the chauffeur knew his master. "Go like the devil till I tell you to stop," the other had said, and without the word from the moveless figure on the rear seat, he would obey till the engine stopped or his hand went numb on the wheel. Hamlets flashed by--huddles of flaring street-lights--then shadow and blankness again. Now and then a hollow rumbling marked a bridge, or a jovial, beckoning doorway betokened a road-house. Ten, twenty, thirty miles. A turn of the wheel and the car swept into a divergent highway. Another mile and again a turn--Bob was shuttling back and forth now, fearful of an impossible distance from home.

The man behind him sat as if graven in stone. At first, while his senses instinctively resisted the intoxication, Harry had been conscious only of blind movement, a frantic flight to escape the unescapable. Yet his whole body was tense, his eyes never wavered, his hand was as steady as his chauffeur's. He was sharply conscious of all about him, every sense recording its message unerringly. He felt the wind-flung dust, heard the chatter of the exhaust, grasped acutely at each detail of sight and sound in the reeling panorama through which they pa.s.sed with such arrow-like swiftness, under a sky that was a wild, blue field of silver flowers. Yet the governance of the mind, the sole arena in which the intoxicant ravened and rioted, the logical faculty to which sense-impression is but material, was astray. And at length the intoxication had wholly conquered.

And with the acknowledged dominance of the sinister thing that held him, the mental turmoil had swiftly stilled. There had come sudden composure--a strange, appalling peace, in which was no appreciation of place or time or fact, but yet a curious exaltation, a sensation of seeing not through a gla.s.s darkly, but with a further mental vision which knew no material bars.

Three hours, four hours--and still no sign. Bob stole a glance behind him. "Wonder what's the matter?" he muttered. "He sure never did want to go h.e.l.l-bent-for-election like this before. Lucky I filled the tank plumb full this morning. She's good for another forty mile, I reckon."

As he withdrew his eyes he became aware of a red light swinging down into the road--a railway-crossing. He threw himself forward on the gear and with a grinding roar the brakes took hold. Plunging and shuddering, the car stopped dead, its forward lamps jingling against the warning bar.

With the sudden stop Harry lurched forward. And, curiously, with the abrupt cessation of motion and roar, the vast, vague distance through which his mind had been shuttling, closed instantly up. The baleful intoxication had lifted as it had come. He did not wake fully at once, for the breaking of the spell left him in a strange confusion through which he saw but dimly the outlines of the real present. He found himself sitting dazed and shaken in his motor--staring at the broad back of his chauffeur beyond which, an isolated point in the darkness of the night, swung the angry red lantern of the crossing. He put a hand to his forehead--what was he doing there?

It was coming back to him. He remembered the straining trial, the hour in his inner office--with the little wall-cabinet! He saw the crowded courtroom, saw himself standing impotent before the bar, saw the despairing face of the man beside him, the puzzled countenances about him, the dim lamps. He heard verdict and sentence. He saw himself turn to gaze into the face of the girl across the court-room--knew the swift rush of the motor, the blazing arc lights and that final stab of realisation!

His lips tightened to shut back something like a groan, as there rushed upon him a sense of horror, of disgust, of shame. The Harry Sevier he had been--the Harry Sevier of good repute, of disdain for the intemperate, of brilliant accomplishment and regular habit, was gazing with horrified eyes at the Harry Sevier he had unwittingly become, the slave of the spirit he had so long invoked, whose coa.r.s.e debauch had to-day betrayed his client, and sent an innocent man to the wretched cell of a convict!

He spoke. "Bob, where are we?"

The chauffeur stole a quick glance behind him--there was relief in it.

"Penitentiary-Crossing, sir," he said. "There's the Black Maria." He pointed to one side, where the gloomy vehicle, a wheeled ark with a narrow barred window set in its rear, waited with its patient mules.

The train was at the crossing now and the rumble of the brakes swelled to a vibrant screech, the long dotted line of dimly-lighted windows shuddering to a stop right athwart the road. A train-man with a lantern jumped down, followed by a couple of pa.s.sengers. Harry opened the door of the tonneau and suddenly conscious that he was stiff and aching in every joint, achieved the ground and took a step toward the train.

Two figures just then emerged from the glare. He saw that they were linked together by a wrist and as the coat of one blew aside, the lights of the motor glinted from a nickel star--the badge of a deputy-sheriff. They had pa.s.sed him, and the train was moving again to the _chug-chug_ of the engine, when the officer turned back, biting the end from a cigar.

"Could you give me a light?" he asked.

"Certainly." Sevier took a silver match-box from his pocket.

The other struck the match, hauling irritably at his lagging prisoner, and the red light, flaring up, for an instant showed the two faces, the sheriff's grim and tenacious, and the one beside it--a white, dogged face, with red-rimmed eyes and a shock of sand-coloured hair.

Sevier shrank as though at a blow in the face. He drew a sharp breath, for the sight pierced to the excoriate spot that lay like a live coal in his soul. There before him stood his client of that day's trial, on the last lap of his dismal journey, the man whom he, Harry Sevier, had sent there! Back of this man of the law, with his gleaming star and pocket revolver, he saw himself standing, the real mainspring of that blatant enginery.

The flare of the match fell. "Well, good night to you," said the deputy-sheriff.

"Hold on," said Harry. "Can a prisoner use money?"

"They're not supposed to, but I reckon money talks as loud in a concrete cell as anywhere else."

Sevier had taken some crisp yellow-backs from his pocket and now he held them out--to the jailbird. "Here!" he said. "Take this."

The other looked at the bills with a suddenly contorted face, then with a whirl of his unfettered hand dashed them on the ground. "Keep your money!" he snarled. "I'm a thief--that's what _I_ am now! When I want money I'll steal it!"

The sheriff made an exclamation, and jerked viciously on the tethered wrist. "Don't you mind, sir," he said. "You mean it well, but this is an ugly one. Lord love you, they'll soon take that out of him over there! Come along, you," he added to the other, pulling him toward the Black Maria, "and if you open your face like that I'll give you what for!"

Sevier stood an instant looking dully after them, then mechanically picked up the fallen bills, fumblingly replaced them in his pocket, and climbed into the motor. He felt his face suddenly hot. In those flung words his judicial mind recognised the indictment. From the little wall-cabinet in his inner-office had crept a thing of shame and humiliation to himself. He saw this now suddenly swell and grow--as did the vapour from the fisherman's cruse--to a blighting, tentacled thing, reaching interminably into the future, holding in its coils a human life of pain, of desperate warfare, of social outlawry.

He sat down on the leather cushions like one in a dream.

"Home now, Bob," he said, heavily.

CHAPTER IV

THE PRODIGAL

At Midfields that evening the late moonlight poured a flood of radiance on the wide columned porch with its climbing roses where Echo sat on the step, chin in hand, absorbed in her own thought. She was alone.

Nancy had slipped off to bed, her mother had retired to her room and her father to the quiet of the library and his reading.

From the kitchens she could hear the m.u.f.fled clash of table-silver and the strident voice of Aunt Emily the cook, grumbling at Nelson: "Yo'-all hurry erlong wid dem ar fawks, now! Speck ah's gwine wait heah all _night_, yo' triflin' trash, yo'? Yo' heah me--yo' ain'

blind! What yo' 'spose Ma.r.s.e Bev'ly _pay_ yo' fo', anyhow?" From far down the road, beyond the gates, she could hear the faint tw.a.n.g of a guitar and the refrain of strolling, darky voices:

"Reign! Reign! Reign-a mah Lawd!

Reign, Ma.r.s.e Jesus, reign!

Reign salvation in-a mah soul, Reign, Ma.r.s.e Jesus, reign!"

These died away with the sharp, eager bark of a dog. Then at length distinguishable sounds faded and there was only the deep, somnolent peace of the southern night, with the scent of the roses wreathing the garden with their intense, mystical odour--only the faint stirring of little leaves playing hide-and-seek with their shadows, and the thin, fairy tone-carpet woven by the myriad looms of night insects for near whispers to tread on.

Since that homeward ride she had had no time to ponder upon the event of the day. At dinner the trial had been touched upon but casually.

Now that she was alone, however, it had rushed uppermost in her thought. It was not that Harry Sevier had lost the verdict: but his speech had seemed to her, in the tension of the crisis, with a man's honour and liberty at stake, inconsequential and almost flippant. And in the measure of her disappointment she had realised anew the depth of her regard for him. Again and again she pictured the scene in the courtroom but each time her thought returned upon itself, baffled and puzzled.

At length, with a long breath that was almost a sigh, she stirred, and rising, pa.s.sed into the library where the Judge sat in the arm-chair by his reading lamp. "You're a disgraceful night-owl," she said, "and I refuse to keep you in countenance any longer."

He smiled at her. "That's right, Sorrel-Top! It's time for beauty-sleep if you and Nancy are off to ride in the morning. Just give me my eye-shade, will you, before you go?"

She brought the green crescent and snapped it on his forehead. "There!

You haven't told me how you like my dress to-night. It's a new one."

He looked. "It's beautiful."

She turned about before him. "I do choose well sometimes, don't I?"

"You do everything well, my dear." In his tone now was a quaint and curious humility which always touched her when she discerned it--something of utter fondness and dependance--and she smoothed his iron-grey hair, one of her characteristic endearments, as she kissed him good night.