Greater Love Hath No Man/Chapter 2
CHAPTER II
"I AM VARGE"
CLOSE, Varge had drawn the other to him, and the breath of one was upon the other's cheek. For a moment, that seemed to span eternity in that little chamber, the two forms on the bed held rigid, motionless—and again there had fallen an utter stillness, a silence as of death, a silence in grim harmony now with the black shadow, blacker than the shadow of the night, that lay upon the house.
As a sudden knife gash shocks veins and arteries into inertia for a brief moment before the blood spurts madly from the wound; so, for that moment, Varge's faculties were shocked to numbness at the other's words. Then his fingers on Merton's shoulders shut vise-like. Horror, loathing of the awful deed revolted him; the inhuman selfishness that had tricked and played upon his gratitude, demanding that he should take this hideous crime upon himself, swept him with seething passion—and only the mighty will power, the self-centred grip of the man upon himself, kept back his fingers from flying at the other's throat to wring the breath from the shaking thing that shivered now in his grasp.
No words passed his lips—tighter his fingers closed. Straight out before him he held Merton—and the blackness between them, cloaking their faces, grew tenser charged as the seconds passed, until it seemed to live, to palpitate, to move and throb and breathe out dread, soundless words.
"Varge! Varge!"—the words gurgled in choking terror from Merton's lips. "Why are you holding me like this? Let me go; let me go, I tell you!"
"I said I would do this thing"—Varge spoke in a low, deadly monotone. "But I will not do it. For your father's sake and your mother's sake, I said I would do anything—"
Merton was battling now wildly, striking out frenzied, aimless blows; mad with a new fear, a physical fear, of Varge; struggling, squirming to free himself. Varge's body swayed not by so much as the fraction of an inch. His arms, like great steel rods, were motionless. It was as though he held, without thought of effort or exertion, some inanimate, paltry object in his grasp.
"—I will not do this thing"—Varge still spoke on, still in the same dull monotone. "What right have you to ask it, you blood-guilty son? What right have you to life that you ask my life for your life? I have no name, you say, to make a curse of—I have nothing to lose, you say, because I do not know who I am. I? I am Varge. You think that I have no soul, no conscience, that the foulest crime in God's sight means nothing to me—because I am a nobody!"
A faint, purling sound came from Merton. He had ceased to struggle. No hurt nor blow had Varge given him; but the cold fury of the man who held him, the fearful power of the grip upon him, that all his own strength would not avail to shake by one iota, seemed to have sunk into his soul and left him swaying sick with terror.
"Save you!"—Varge, like an outraged judge, was summing up his terrible arraignment. "Save you from the punishment of a crime too awful to speak aloud! Save you because I owe gratitude to the one whose life an inhuman son has taken! It would be better to end it here myself than to let you escape. It would be better to end—"
Slowly, very slowly, Varge's fingers relaxed—slowly, as though some unseen power, stronger than himself, plucked them one by one from the hold to which they clung, lingering, reluctant to let go. A limp thing dropped from his grasp and fell across the bed. And slowly, very slowly, Varge's hands crept through the darkness and clasped themselves over his own temples.
It came shadowy at first, as though just beyond the range of mental vision, eluding it; it came then gradually more and more distinct, as if folds of some gauzy texture—each fold transparent in itself, the whole but a misty covering that no more than blurred the object that it veiled—were being drawn aside one after the other. And now he saw clearly. Breathing, living, pulsing life, a picture, hallowed, softened, from the brush of the Master Painter was lifted up to his gaze—the silvered hair, with its old-lace cap, smoothly parted across the fair, white brow; the tiny furrows in the skin, scarcely discernible, as though age, regretful of its part to touch at all, had touched with gentle, reverent hand; the grey eyes, soft and tender, looking into his, full of trust, pure, serene, calm; the lips, half-parted, smiling at him with the loving, happy smile he knew so well—the face, full of sweet dignity, was the face of her who had taken a mother's place in his life, whom he had come to reverence and love, as he realised he would have reverenced and loved his own mother had he ever known her—the face of Mrs. Merton.
The fine-poised, agile brain of the man, full of simple majesty that obtruded neither thought of self nor doubt of consequence, leaped in a lightning flash from premise to conclusion. Grief and sorrow that would bow the grey head down, anguish that would break the tender heart, he could not save her from; he could not bring back to life the form, already cold, she loved so well. But from this other thing, this awful thing, that would strike at her very reason, shatter her faith in the existence of her God, outrage her mother love to hideous mockery and drag her gentle soul in shuddering torture to her grave, crush from her life all that in life was left to her, love, comfort, hope, trust—the great heart of Varge welled with the love he bore her—this thing she should never know, this thing should never touch her.
Merton lay across his feet. He pushed the other away, got out of bed and for a moment stood by the open window motionless. The still, cold air of the winter night was grateful, thin-clad though he was. Not a sound broke the silence from without. Everywhere the snow, under a black, starless sky, lay white-mantling the ground—whiter, it seemed somehow, than he had ever seen it before. Across the river, lower down in a hollow, lay the town, two miles away. Scarce more than pin-points, two or three lights, twinkling faintly, indicated its position. A moment he stood there, then feeling his way to the chair beside the little washstand over which his clothes, as usual, had been carefully folded, he began to dress in the darkness. A light to him now was abhorrent—he dared not even trust himself to look on the other's face.
A rustle came from the bed. Merton, evidently judging that Varge's actions were the result of some decision relative to himself, had started up in an accession of terrified apprehension.
"Varge," he mumbled huskily. "Varge, what—what are you going to do?"
As though voicing his thoughts aloud unconsciously, rather than in answer to another, Varge spoke in a low, concentrated way.
"I will do it. It is I who have killed Doctor Merton."
It was as if it crept upon Merton slowly. An instant he held silent, still. Then came reaction. A mad paroxysm of relief seemed to sweep the coward soul, he sat upright and struggled to the edge of the bed, babbling, whispering, incoherent almost in his craven transport.
"You will, eh?—yes, you'll do it, Varge. I've money enough to begin with—and I can get more. You'll do it after all, eh? Yes; I knew you would. I knew you'd stand by me. I knew you wouldn't fail me, Varge; we've been good friends you and I, and—" The words froze on Merton's lips. Varge had crossed to the bed, his hand had reached out through the darkness, closed on Merton's leg just above the knee and tightened with the same crushing grip that before had stricken the man with terror.
"Can you not understand?"—Varge's whisper came now hoarse and tense. "Do not speak, except to answer my questions—I am afraid of myself with the thought of saving you. You were seen, you said. How were you seen so that the crime would point to you and yet would be of no proof against you if suspicion were turned upon some one else?"
"Varge, let go!" Merton cried faintly. "For God's sake, let go—you are breaking my leg!"
With a curious movement, as one suddenly releases his hold upon an object he has unwittingly, unconsciously grasped, which to the sense of touch is utterly repugnant, Varge drew away his hand.
"Answer my question," he said. "If you have been seen at all, there cannot be much time to spare."
"No, no; there is not much—there's not a moment to lose"—this phase, not new, but for a while dormant through other terrors and now awakened again, brought the words in pitiful eagerness from Merton's lips. "I'll tell you everything—everything. Listen. I got into trouble in New York a little while ago—serious trouble. There was a woman in it. I thought it was all hushed up. The day after I came down here for a visit last week I received a letter—and the whole cursed business was in it. I lost the letter, Varge. Father found it, and without saying anything to me investigated the whole thing. To-night he called me into the library after mother had gone to bed—he said he hadn't dared to tell her anything. He opened one of the little square cupboards in the wall at the side of the fireplace, you know the one, the one on the right hand side, where he keeps his books, papers and money, and took out the letter with a lot of others he had received about it and showed them to me. He was in a fearful rage. We quarrelled. But there was no noise—we were afraid of awakening mother. Then I don't know just what happened. I was standing by the fire poking it with that long fender bar. I think he meant to snatch it from my hand, just with angry impetuosity. We struggled and—it wasn't cold blood, Varge. We—we'd been quarrelling. I didn't know what I did. I struck him on the side of the head with the bar and he—he fell."
Merton paused, and in the silence came the sound as of hands hard-wrung together till the finger joints crackled.
Varge moved away from the bed, back to the little washstand and resumed his dressing.
"Go on," he said.
"I tore up the letters and burned them in the grate"—Merton's voice was a low moan now. "And then, I don't know why, I went to the window and drew up the blind, and looked out onto the lawn. It was all snow, white, white, white, and not a mark in it. I was trying to think what to do, when I heard a sound back of me from where—where It lay. It startled me and turned my blood cold. I whirled around and jumped back across the room, and—and bent over father before I realised what had made the noise. It was only a piece of coal falling in the grate, only a piece—" Merton broke off jerkily, and a short, sobbing laugh of hysteria came from him.
"Go on," said Varge again.
"I—I bent over father then. I—I was cool again. The thought came to me that he might be only stunned—but, but he was dead. I was perhaps three minutes, perhaps longer, I don't know how long, bending over him, and then I looked up—there was a face pressed close against the window pane and the eyes were glaring in at me. Something held me still—I couldn't move. I must have taken my eyes away instantly, so I am sure he didn't know I saw him. When I looked again the face was gone. Then I got up, it seemed at once, though I suppose it must have been another minute, and went to the window. There was no one in sight, but there were footprints in the snow and the trees hid the road. I jerked down the blind, and then—and then—I thought of you. I turned off the light, crept out of the room and stole up here. I wanted to get you to run away—it was my only chance. I wanted to get you to run away, to make them think you did it, and I—I had a story all ready to tell that would account for my being seen in the room as I was. I would say that I had been reading late upstairs and heard your voice and father's in the library; then silence. That I had kept on reading, and after a while, wondering why father hadn't come up to bed, I went downstairs softly so as not to awaken mother and found him dead—and that then I went for you and you had disappeared. It was Mart Robson's face at the window—he's never liked me anyhow. I suppose the MacGregors must have sent him from the farm for a doctor, and he saw the light and instead of ringing the bell and waking up the house he went first to the window. I know what he's done now—he's gone on to the town to tell the sheriff what he's seen. Varge, do you hear, he's on his way there now!"
Varge's mind was working quickly—mapping, planning out his course of action—weaving the finer threads of detail into the web that was to enmesh himself and free the other. His coat was on now, and he turned to face Merton through the darkness. It was all clear, all plain, even to that one thing that had troubled him—to lessen, to soften the shock to her.
"Listen," he said. "I am dressed. I am going. You must make no mistake now. You should not have turned off the light nor drawn down the shade again—you did not do either—I will attend to them. You did not see any one at the window. For the rest, you can tell your story as you intended—but there are two things you must do. First, you must telephone the sheriff; if you cannot get him, do not waste time over it—you must have tried, that is the important thing. Then you must go at once for Mrs. MacLaughlin, your mother's friend, and bring her back here before Mrs. Merton is awakened—that should not take you more than fifteen minutes, and you must not be longer. When you come back, go into that room again and fix each detail as you find it then in your mind, and be careful that your story agrees in every particular. Do you understand?"
"Yes, yes"—Merton struggled from the bed to his feet—"I will telephone at once, and then—"
"Wait," said Varge sharply. "Two of us on the stairs at once may make a noise. Wait until I have gone down." He moved across the room, felt for the door and opened it.
"Yes; but, Varge, money"—Merton was whispering wildly—"you can't get away without money, and everything depends on your getting away, you've got to get away—here, take—"
"I shall have no need of money," Varge answered, as he stepped out into the passage.