The Knave of Diamonds, Ethel May Dell [fun books to read for adults txt] 📗

blue eyes so like his master's. He began to whimper like a beaten dog.
Bertie picked up the knob. "Poor devil!" he muttered; and then aloud: "You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Do you call this a man's game?"
Tawny cringed in abject misery. He was completely subdued. With the smallest encouragement he would have grovelled at Bertie's feet.
Bertie came away from the door and sat down. His own anxiety was almost insupportable, but he cloaked it with determined resolution. "Sit down there!" he said, pointing to a distant chair. "And don't move until I give you leave."
Meekly the man obeyed him, sitting crouched, his head between his hands.
Bertie regarded him with a severity more assumed than actual. He had not the heart to send him away. He knew it would have been sheer cruelty.
A long time passed. Neither of the two watchers stirred. Tawny Hudson did not even seem to breathe. He sat like a human image of despair.
Noon came and passed. Somewhere in the distance church bells began to peal. Bertie started a little. He had forgotten it was Sunday. Dot would be just driving home from church. She would not come to Baronmead, he knew. It had been her original intention, but he had dissuaded her. He knew that she was very anxious, but he would not have her run the risk of a shock. If the operation failed, if Luke were to die, he would tell her himself. He knew that he could soften the blow as none other could.
It was nearly one when at last the closed door opened. Bertie was on his feet in an instant. Dr. Randal came quietly out, glanced round, stopped.
"It is over. We have taken him into the inner room, and he is recovering consciousness. No, don't go to him. His man mustn't go either. We want all these doors open, wide open, the windows too. But no one is to go near. He must have absolute quiet."
He propped open the door as he spoke. His face was very grave.
"Remember," he said, "that the banging of this door or any sudden sound may mean the end."
"Is he so bad then?" said Bertie, speaking with effort.
"He is very bad indeed," the doctor answered. "The operation has been a protracted one. If he lives, it will be a success. But there is great weakness of the heart's action. Any moment may be the last. Dr. Capper will not leave him at present. Your brother is there too." He paused a moment. "Your brother is a wonderful man," he said, with the air of a man bestowing praise against his will. "If you will be good enough to order some refreshment I will take it in. On no account is Mr. Errol's servant to go near."
Slowly the hours of a day that seemed endless dragged away. Bertie went home to his wife in the afternoon, taking Tawny Hudson, subdued and wretched, with him.
In the evening he returned, the man still following him like a pariah dog, to find the situation unaltered. Capper and Nap were still with Lucas, whose life hung by a thread.
Bertie decided to remain for the night, and at a late hour he saw Capper for a moment. The great man's face was drawn and haggard.
"He won't last through the night," he said. "Tell the ladies to be in readiness. I will send for them if there is time."
"No hope whatever?" said Bertie.
Capper shook his head. "I fear--none. He is just running down--sinking. I think you had better not come in, but stay within call."
He was gone again, and Bertie was left to give his message, and then to wait in anguish of spirit for the final call.
The night was still. Only the draught from the wide-flung doors and windows stirred through the quiet rooms. Mrs. Errol and Anne shared Bertie's vigil in the room that opened out of that in which Lucas Errol was making his last stand. Humbly, in a corner, huddled Tawny Hudson, rocking himself, but making no sound.
Within the room Capper sat at the foot of the bed, motionless, alert as a sentry. A nurse stood like a statue, holding back the bellying window-curtain. And on his knees beside the bed, the inert wrists gripped close in his sinewy fingers, was Nap.
The light of a shaded lamp shone upon his dusky face, showing the gleam of his watchful eyes, the crude lines of jaw and cheek-bone. He looked like a figure carved in bronze.
For hours he had knelt so in unceasing vigilance, gazing unblinking and tireless at the exhausted face upon the pillow. It might have been the face of a dead man upon which he gazed, but the pulses that fluttered in his hold told him otherwise. Lucas still held feebly, feebly, to his chain.
It was nearly an hour after midnight that a voice spoke in the utter silence.
"Boney!"
"I'm here, old chap."
"Good-bye, dear fellow!" It was scarcely more than a whisper. It seemed to come from closed lips.
"Open your eyes," said Nap.
Slowly the heavy lids opened. The blue eyes met the deep, mysterious gaze focussed upon them.
Silent as a ghost Capper glided forward. The nurse left the window, and the curtain floated out into the room, fluttering like an imprisoned thing seeking to escape.
"Ah, but, Boney--" the tired voice said, as though in protest.
And Nap's voice, thrilled through and through with a tenderness that was more than human, made answer. "Just a little longer, dear old man! Only a little longer! See! I'm holding you up. Turn up the lamp, doctor. Take off the shade. He can't see me. There, old chap! Look at me now. Grip hold of me. You can't go yet. I'm with you. I'm holding you back."
Capper trickled something out of a spoon between the pale lips, and for a little there was silence.
But the blue eyes remained wide, fixed upon those other fiery eyes that held them by some mysterious magic from falling into sightlessness.
Three figures had come in through the open door, moving wraith-like, silently. The room seemed full of shadows.
After a while Lucas spoke again, and this time his lips moved perceptibly. "It's such a long way back, Boney,--no end of a trail--and all up hill."
The flare of the lamp was full upon Nap's face; it threw the harsh lines into strong relief, and it seemed to Anne, watching, that she looked upon the face of a man in extremity. His voice too--was that Nap's voice pleading so desperately?
"Don't be faint-hearted, old chap! I'll haul you up. It won't be so tough presently. You're through the worst already. Hold on, Luke, hold on!"
Again Capper poured something between the parted lips, and a quiver ran through the powerless body.
"Hold on!" Nap repeated. "You promised you would. You mustn't go yet, old boy. You can't be spared. I shall go to the devil without you."
"Not you, Boney!" Lucas's lips quivered into a smile. "That's all over," he said. "You're playing--the straight game--now."
"You must stay and see it through," said Nap. "I can't win out without you."
"Ah!" A long sigh came pantingly with the word. "That so, Boney? Guess I'm--a selfish brute--always was--always was."
A choked sob came through the stillness. Bertie suddenly covered his face. Mrs. Errol put her arm round him as one who comforted a child.
"Is that--someone--crying?" gasped Lucas.
"It's that ass Bertie," answered Nap, without stirring so much as an eyelid.
"Bertie? Poor old chap! Tell him he mustn't. Tell him--I'll hang on--a little longer--God willing; but only a little longer, Boney, only--a little--longer."
There was pleading in the voice, the pleading of a man unutterably tired and longing to be at rest.
Anne, standing apart, was cut to the heart with the pathos of it. But Nap did not seem to feel it. He knelt on, inflexible, determined, all his iron will, all his fiery vitality, concentrated upon holding a man in life. It was not all magnetism, it was not all strength of purpose, it was his whole being grappling, striving, compelling, till inch by inch he gained a desperate victory.
In the morning the fight was over. In the morning Lucas Errol had turned, reluctantly as it seemed to Anne, from the Gate of Death.
And while he lay sleeping quietly, the spring air, pure and life-giving, blowing across his face, the man who had brought him back rose up from his bedside, crept with a noiseless, swaying motion from the room, and sank senseless on the further side of the door.


CHAPTER XV
THE KING'S DECREE

For three weeks after the operation Capper said nothing good or bad of his patient's condition, and during those weeks he scarcely went beyond the terrace. He moved about like a man absorbed, and it seemed to Anne whenever they met that he looked at her without seeing her.
Nap was even closer in his attendance, and Tawny Hudson found himself more than ever supplanted and ignored. For night and day he was at hand, sleeping when and how he could, always alert at the briefest notice, always ready with unfailing nerve and steady hand.
And Capper suffered him without the smallest remonstrance. He seemed to take it for granted that Nap's powers were illimitable.
"That young man will kill himself," Dr. Randal said once. "He is living at perpetual high pressure."
"Leave him alone," growled Capper. "He is the force that drives the engine. The wheels won't go round without him."
And this seemed true; for the wheels went round very, very slowly in those days. Lucas Errol came back to life, urged by a vitality not his own, and the Shadow of Death still lingered in his eyes.
He did not suffer very greatly, and he slept as he had not slept for years, but his progress was slow, sometimes imperceptible. The languor of intense weakness hung like a leaden weight upon him. The old brave cheeriness had given place to a certain curious wistfulness. He seemed too weary for effort, content at all times to sleep the hours away.
Yet when Capper demanded effort he yielded without protest. He did his best, and he smiled at each evidence of returning powers.
"I guess it's just an almighty success, doctor," he would say. "And you've given me sleep into the bargain. It's blessed to be able to sleep. I've a good many years of arrears to make up."
On the day that Capper and Nap set him on his feet for the first time, his weakness was such that he fainted; but he recovered and apologised, and would even have faced the ordeal again had Capper permitted it. On the following day he went through it without a tremor, and slept thereafter for hours, scarcely rousing himself for nourishment.
It was during that sleep that Nap left him, went out into the spring woods, and remained absent for some time. Lucas was still sleeping when he returned, and after a brief look at him he moved away into the adjoining room and prowled to and fro there waiting.
At the first sound of his brother's voice he was back by the bedside.
Lucas smiled a welcome. "I'm better," he said, and held up a weak hand.
It was the first time he had made the assertion. Nap took the hand and laid it gently down.
"You'll get well now," he said.
The heavy drowsiness was less apparent than usual on Lucas's face. "I don't know where I'd be without you, Boney," he said. "Do you know you're looking awfully ill?"
"Shucks!" said Nap.
But Lucas continued his criticism undeterred.
"You've spent too much of yourself on me, and I've been too damned selfish to notice. I'm going to